COLLECTED    ESSAYS 

BY  T.  H.  HUXLEY 


VOLUME  II 


THOMAS  H.  HUXLEY'S  WORKS. 
Collected  Essays. 

Vol.  i.   Method  and  Results. 
"    a.   IJarwiniana. 
"    3.   Science  and  Education. 
"    4.   Science  and  Hebrew  Tradition. 
"    5.  Science  and  Christian  Tradition. 
"    6.    Hume. 

"    7.  Man's  Place  in  Nature. 
"    8.   Discourses,  Biological  and  Geological. 
"    o.  Evolution    and     Ethics,     and    Other 
Essays. 

i2mo.    Cloth,  $1.25  per  volume. 

The  Crayfish: 

An    Introduction   to  the    Study  of  Zoology. 
With  82  Illustrations,     izmo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

Manual  of  the   Anatomy  of  Vertebrated 

Animals.     Illustrated.      I2rao.     Cloth,  $2.50. 

Manual  of  the  Anatomy  of  Invertebrated 

Animals.     Illustrated.     i2mo.     Cloth,  $2.50. 

Physiography : 

An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Nature.    With 
Illustrations  and  Colored  Plates.    i2mo.    Cloth,  $2.50. 


New  York :  D.  APPLETON   &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Arenue. 


DARWINIANA 


ESSAYS 


BY 

THOMAS  H.   HUXLEY 


NEW   YORK 

D.   APPLETON    AND   COMPANY 
1894 


Authorized  Edition. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
SANTA  BARBARA  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 


c.v 


PEEFACE 

I  HAVE  entitled  this  volume  "  Darwiniana " 
because  the  pieces  republished  in  it  either  treat  of 
the  ancient  doctrine  of  Evolution,  rehabilitated  and 
placed  upon  a  sound  scientific  foundation,  since 
and  in  consequence  of,  the  publication  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species. ;  "  or  they  attempt  to  meet  the 
more  weighty  of  the  unsparing  criticisms  with 
which  that  great  work  was  visited  for  several  years 
after  its  appearance  ;  or  they  record  the  impression 
left  by  the  personality  of  Mr.  Darwin  on  one  who 
had  the  privilege  and  the  happiness  of  enjoying  his 
friendship  for  some  thirty  years ;  or  they  endeavour 
to  sum  up  his  work  and  indicate  its  enduring 
influence  on  the  course  of  scientific  thought. 

Those  who  take  the  trouble  to  read  the  first 
two  essays,  published  in  1859  and  1860,  will,  I 
think,  do  me  the  justice  to  admit  that  my  zeal  to 
secure  fair  play  for  Mr.  Darwin,  did  not  drive  me 
into  the  position  of  a  mere  advocate ;  and  that, 
while  doing  justice  to  the  greatness  of  the  argu- 


Vi  PREFACE 

ment  I  did  not  fail  to  indicate  its  weak  points.  I 
have  never  seen  any  reason  for  departing  from  the 
position  which  I  took  up  in  these  two  essays ;  and 
the  assertion  which  I  sometimes  meet  with  nowa- 
days, that  I  have  "  recanted "  or  changed  my 
opinions  about  Mr.  Darwin's  views,  is  quite  unin- 
telligible to  me. 

As  I  have  said  in  the  seventh  essay,  the  fact  of 
evolution  is  to  my  mind  sufficiently  evidenced  by 
palaeontology ;  and  I  remain  of  the  opinion  ex- 
pressed in  the  second,  that  until  selective  breeding 
is  definitely  proved  to  give  rise  to  varieties  infertile 
with  one  another,  the  logical  foundation  of  the 
theory  of  natural  selection  is  incomplete.  We  still 
remain  very  much  in  the  dark  about  the  causes  of 
variation ;  the  apparent  inheritance  of  acquired 
characters  in  some  cases;  and  the  struggle  for 
existence  within  the  organism,  which  probably 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  both  of  these  phenomena. 

Some  apology  is  due  to  the  reader  for  the  repro- 
duction of  the  "  Lectures  to  Working  Men "  in 
their  original  state.  They  were  taken  down  in 
shorthand  by  Mr.  J.  Aldous  Mays,  who  requested 
me  to  allow  him  to  print  them.  I  was  very  much 
pressed  with  work  at  the  time  ;  and,  as  I  could  not 
revise  the  reports,  which  I  imagined,  moreover, 
would  be  of  little  or  no  interest  to  any  but  my 
auditors,  I  stipulated  that  a  notice  should  be  pre- 
fixed to  that  effect.  This  was  done  ;  but  it  did  not 


PREFACE.  vii 

prevent  a  considerable  diffusion  of  the  little  book 
in  this  country  and  in  the  United  States,  nor  its 
translation  into  more  than  one  foreign  language. 
Moreover  Mr.  Darwin  often  urged  me  to  revise  and 
expand  the  lectures  into  a  systematic  popular 
exposition  of  the  topics  of  which  they  treat.  I 
have  more  than  once  set  about  the  task  :  but  the 
proverb  about  spoiling  a  horn  and  not  making  a 
spoon,  is  particularly  applicable  to  attempts  to 
remodel  a  piece  of  work  which  may  have  served  its 
immediate  purpose  well  enough. 

So  I  have  reprinted  the  lectures  as  they  stand, 
with  all  their  imperfections  on  their  heads.  It 
would  seem  that  many  people  must  have  found 
them  useful  thirty  years  ago  ;  and,  though  the 
sixties  appear  now  to  be  reckoned  by  many  of  the 
rising  generation  as  a  part  of  the  dark  ages,  I  am 
not  without  some  grounds  for  suspecting  that 
there  yet  remains  a  fair  sprinkling  even  of 
"philosophic  thinkers"  to  whom  it  may  be  a 
profitable,  perhaps  even  a  novel,  task  to  descend 
from  the  heights  of  speculation  and  go  over  the 
A  B  C  of  the  great  biological  problem  as  it  was 
set  before  a  body  of  shrewd  artisans  at  that  remote 
epoch. 


T.H.H. 


HODESLEA,  EASTBOURNE, 
April  7th,  1893. 


CONTENTS 


i 

PAOK 
THE  DARWINIAN  HYPOTHESIS  [1859] 1 


II 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  [1860]    . 


Ill 

^•CRITICISMS  ON   "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "  [1864]     ...        80 

IV 

THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  [1869] 107 

V 

MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  [1871] 120 

VI 
/ 

EVOLUTION  IN  BIOLOGY  [1878] 187 


r  CONTENTS 

VII 

PA  OH 

THE     COMING    OF    AGE    OF    "THE    ORIGIN    OF  SPECIES " 

[1880] .227 


VIII 

CHARLES  DARWIN  [1882] 244 

IX 

THE  DARWIN  MEMORIAL  [1886] 248 

X 

OBITUARY  [1888] 253 


XI 

SIX  LECTURES  TO  WORKING  MEN  "  ON  OUR  KNOWLEDGE 
OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC 
NATURE  "[1863] 80S 


I 

THE  DARWINIAN  HYPOTHESIS 

[1859] 

THE  hypothesis  of  which  the  present  work  of 
Mr.  Darwin  is  but  the  preliminary  outline,  may 
be  stated  in  his  own  language  as  follows : — 
"  Species  originated  by  means  of  natural  selection, 
or  through  the  preservation  of  the  favoured  races 
in  the  struggle  for  life."  To  render  this  thesis 
intelligible,  it  is  necessary  to  interpret  its  terms. 
In  the  first  place,  what  is  a  species  ?  The  question 
is  a  simple  one,  but  the  right  answer  to  it  is  hard 
to  find,  even  if  we  appeal  to  those  who  should 
know  most  about  it.  It  is  all  those  animals  or 
plants  which  have  descended  from  a  single  pair  of 
parents;  it  is  the  smallest  distinctly  definable 
group  of  living  organisms ;  it  is  an  eternal  and 
immutable  entity  ;  it  is  a  mere  abstraction  of  the 
human  intellect  having  no  existence  in  nature. 
Such  are  a  few  of  the  significations  attached  to 


THE  DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  j 

this  simple  word  which  may  be  culled  from 
authoritative  sources ;  and  if,  leaving  terms  and 
theoretical  subtleties  aside,  we  turn  to  facts  and 
endeavour  to  gather  a  meaning  for  ourselves,  by 
studying  the  things  to  which,  in  practice,  the 
name  of  species  is  applied,  it  profits  us  little.  For 
practice  varies  as  much  as  theory.  Let  two 
botanists  or  two  zoologists  examine  and  describe 
the  productions  of  a  country,  and  one  will  pretty 
certainly  disagree  with  the  other  as  to  the  number, 
limits,  and  definitions  of  the  species  into  which  he 
groups  the  very  same  things.  In  these  islands,  we 
are  in  the  habit  of  regarding  mankind  as  of  one 
species,  but  a  fortnight's  steam  will  land  us  in  a 
country  where  divines  and  savants,  for  once  in 
agreement,  vie  with  one  another  in  loudness  of 
assertion,  if  not  in  cogency  of  proof,  that  men  are 
of  different  species ;  and,  more  particularly,  that 
the  species  negro  is  so  distinct  from  our  own  that 
the  Ten  Commandments  have  actually  no  reference 
to  him.  Even  in  the  calm  region  of  entomology, 
where,  if  anywhere  in  this  sinful  world,  passion 
and  prejudice  should  fail  to  stir  the  mind,  one 
learned  coleopterist  will  fill  ten  attractive  volumes 
with  descriptions  of  species  of  beetles,  nine-tenths 
of  which  are  immediately  declared  by  his  brother 
beetle-mongers  to  be  no  species  at  all. 

The  truth  is  that  the  number  of  distinguishable 
living  creatures  almost  surpasses  imagination.  At 
least  100,000  such  kinds  of  insects  alone  have  been 


!A,r/t   ^XXv  V'-/Y'  'A   TT*     '     $   ^ 
iLw  -  ' 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS 

described  and  may  be  identified  in  collections,  and 
the  number  of  separable  kinds  of  living  things  is 
under-estimated  at  half  a  million.  Seeing  that 
most  of  these  obvious  kinds  have  their  accidental 
varieties,  and  that  they  often  shade  into  others 
by  imperceptible  degrees,  it  may  well  be 
imagined  that  the  task  of  distinguishing  be- 
tween what  is  permanent  and  what  fleeting, 
what  is  a  species  and  what  a  mere  variety, 
is  sufficiently  formidable. 

But  is  it  not  possible  to  apply  a  test  whereby  a 
true  species  may  be  known  from  a  mere  variety  ? 
Is  there  no  criterion  of  species  ?  Great  authori- 
ties affirm  that  there  is — that  the  unions  of 
members  of  the  same  species  are  always  fertile, 
while  those  of  distinct  species  are  either  sterile, 
or  their  offspring,  called  hybrids,  are  so.  It  is 
affirmed  not  only  that  this  is  an  experimental 
fact,  but  that  it  is  a  provision  for  the  preservation 
of  the  purity  of  species.  Such  a  criterion  as  this 
would  be  invaluable  ;  but,  unfortunately,  not  only 
is  it  not  obvious  how  to  apply  it  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  in  which  its  aid  is  needed,  but 
its  general  validity  is  stoutly  denied.  The  Hon. 
and  Rev.  Mr.  Herbert,  a  most  trustworthy  authority, 
not  only  asserts  as  the  result  of  his  own  observa- 
tions and  experiments  that  many  hybrids  are 
quite  as  fertile  as  the  parent  species,  but  he  goes 
so  far  as  to  assert  that  the  particular  plant  Crinum 
capense  is  much  more  fertile  when  crossed  by  a 


4  THE   DARWINIAN    HYPOTHESIS  i 

distinct  species  than  when  fertilised  by  its  proper 
pollen  !  On  the  other  hand,  the  famous  Gaertner, 
though  he  took  the  greatest  pains  to  cross  the 
Primrose  and  the  Cowslip,  succeeded  only  once  or 
twice  in  several  years ;  and  yet  it  is  a  well- 
established  fact  that  the  Primrose  and  the  Cow- 
slip are  only  varieties  of  the  same  kind  of  plant. 
Again,  such  cases  as  the  following  are  well  estab- 
lished. The  female  of  species  A,  if  crossed  with 
the  male  of  species  B,  is  fertile  ;  but,  if  the  female 
of  B  is  crossed  with  the  male  of  A,  she  remains 
barren.  Facts  of  this  kind  destroy  the  value  of 
the  supposed  criterion. 

If,  weary  of  the  endless  difficulties  involved  in 
the  determination  of  species,  the  investigator, 
contenting  himself  with  the  rough  practical 
distinction  of  separable  kinds,  endeavours  to 
study  them  as  they  occur  in  nature — to  ascertain 
their  relations  to  the  conditions  which  surround 
them,  their  mutual  harmonies  and  discordancies  of 
structure,  the  bond  of  union  of  their  present  and 
their  past  history,  he  finds  himself,  according  to 
the  received  notions,  in  a  mighty  maze,  and  with, 
at  most,  the  dimmest  adumbration  of  a  plan. 
If  he  starts  with  any  one  clear  conviction,  it  is 
that  every  part  of  a  living  creature  is  cunningly 
adapted  to  some  special  use  in  its  life.  Has  not 
his  Paley  told  him  that  that  seemingly  useless 
organ,  the  spleen,  is  beautifully  adjusted  as  so 
much  packing  between  the  other  organs?  And 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  5 

yet,  at  the  outset  of  his  studies,  he  finds  that  no 
adaptive  reason  whatsoever  can  be  given  for  one- 
half  of  the  peculiarities  of  vegetable  structure. 
He  also  discovers  rudimentary  teeth,  which  are 
never  used,  in  the  gums  of  the  young  calf  and  in 
those  of  the  foetal  whale ;  insects  which  never 
bite  have  rudimental  jaws,  and  others  which 
never  fly  have  rudimental  wings ;  naturally  blind 
creatures  have  rudimental  eyes  ;  and  the  halt 
have  rudimentary  limbs.  So,  again,  no  animal  or 
plant  puts  on  its  perfect  form  at  once,  but  all  have 
to  start  from  the  same  point,  however  various  the 
course  which  each  has  to  pursue.  Not  only  men 
and  horses,  and  cats  and  dogs,  lobsters  and 
beetles,  periwinkles  and  mussels,  but  even  the 
very  sponges  and  animalcules  commence  their 
existence  under  forms  which  are  essentially 
undistinguishable ;  and  this  is  true  of  all  the 
infinite  variety  of  plants.  Nay,  more,  all  living 
beings  march,  side  by  side,  along  the  high  road  of 
development,  and  separate  the  later  the  more  like 
they  are  ;  like  people  leaving  church,  who  all  go 
down  the  aisle,  but  having  reached  the  door,  some 
turn  into  the  parsonage,  others  go  down  the 
village,  and  others  part  only  in  the  next  parish. 
A  man  in  his  development  runs  for  a  little  while 
parallel  with,  though  never  passing  through,  the 
form  of  the  meanest  worm,  then  travels  for  a 
space  beside  the  fish,  then  journeys  along  with 
the  bird  and  the  reptile  for  his  fellow  travellers ; 


6  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  i 

and  only  at  last,  after  a  brief  companionship  with 
the  highest  of  the  four-footed  and  four-handed 
world,  rises  into  the  dignity  of  pure  manhood.  No 
competent  thinker  of  the  present  day  dreams  of 
explaining  these  indubitable  facts  by  the  notion 
of  the  existence  of  unknown  and  undiscoverable 
adaptations  to  purpose.  And  we  would  remind 
those  who,  ignorant  of  the  facts,  must  be  moved 
by  authority,  that  no  one  has  asserted  the  incom- 
petence of  the  doctrine  of  final  causes,  in  its 
application  to  physiology  and  anatomy,  more 
strongly  than  our  own  eminent  anatomist, 
Professor  Owen,  who,  speaking  of  such  cases,  says 
("On  the  Nature  of  Limbs,"  pp.  39,  40)— "  I 
think  it  will  be  obvious  that  the  principle  of  final 
adaptations  fails  to  satisfy  all  the  conditions  of 
the  problem." 

But,  if  the  doctrine  of  final  causes  will  not 
help  us  to  comprehend  the  anomalies  of  living 
structure,  the  principle  of  adaptation  must  surely 
lead  us  to  understand  why  certain  living  beings  are 
found  in  certain  regions  of  the  world  and  not  in 
others.  The  Palm,  as  we  know,  will  not  grow  in 
our  climate,  nor  the  Oak  in  Greenland.  The 
white  bear  cannot  live  where  the  tiger  thrives, 
nor  vice  versa,  and  the  more  the  natural  habits  of 
animal  and  vegetable  species  are  examined,  the 
more  do  they  seem,  on  the  whole,  limited  to 
particular  provinces.  But  when  we  look  into  the 
facts  established  by  the  study  of  the  geographical 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  7 

distribution  of  animals  and  plants  it  seems 
utterly  hopeless  to  attempt  to  understand  the 
strange  and  apparently  capricious  relations  which 
they  exhibit.  One  would  be  inclined  to  suppose 
a  priori  that  every  country  must  be  naturally 
peopled  by  those  animals  that  are  fittest  to  live 
and  thrive  in  it.  And  yet  how,  on  this  hypothesis, 
are  we  to  account  for  the  absence  of  cattle  in  the 
Pampas  of  South  America,  when  those  parts  of 
the  New  World  were  discovered  ?  It  is  not  that 
they  were  unfit  for  cattle,  for  millions  of  cattle 
now  run  wild  there ;  and  the  like  holds  good  of 
Australia  and  New  Zealand.  It  is  a  curious 
circumstance,  in  fact,  that  the  animals  and  plants 
of  the  Northern  Hemisphere  are  not  only  as  well 
adapted  to  live  in  the  Southern  Hemisphere  as 
its  own  autochthones,  but  are,  in  many  cases, 
absolutely  better  adapted,  and  so  overrun  and 
extirpate  the  aborigines.  Clearly,  therefore,  the 
species  which  naturally  inhabit  a  country  are  not 
necessarily  the  best  adapted  to  its  climate  and 
other  conditions.  The  inhabitants  of  islands  are 
often  distinct  from  any  other  known  species  of 
animal  or  plants  (witness  our  recent  examples 
from  the  work  of  Sir  Emerson  Tennent,  on 
Ceylon),  and  yet  they  have  almost  always  a  sort 
of  general  family  resemblance  to  the  animals  and 
plants  of  the  nearest  mainland.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  is  hardly  a  species  of  fish,  shell,  or 
crab  common  to  the  opposite  sides  of  the  narrow 


8  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  I 

isthmus  of  Panama.1  Wherever  we  look,  then, 
living  nature  offers  us  riddles  of  difficult  solution, 
if  we  suppose  that  what  we  see  is  all  that  can 
be  known  of  it. 

But  our  knowledge  of  life  is  not  confined  to  the 
existing  world.  Whatever  their  minor  differences, 
geologists  are  agreed  as  to  the  vast  thickness  of  the 
accumulated  strata  which  compose  the  visible  part 
of  our  earth,  and  the  inconceivable  immensity  of 
the  time  the  lapse  of  which  they  are  the  imperfect 
but  the  only  accessible  witnesses.  Now,  through- 
out the  greater  part  of  this  long  series  of  stratified 
rocks  are  scattered,  sometimes  very  abundantly, 
multitudes  of  organic  remains,  the  fossilised 
exuvias  of  animals  and  plants  which  lived  and 
died  while  the  mud  of  which  the  rocks  are  formed 
was  yet  soft  ooze,  and  could  receive  and  bury 
them.  It  would  be  a  great  error  to  suppose  that 
these  organic  remains  were  fragmentary  relics. 
Our  museums  exhibit  fossil  shells  of  immeasurable 
antiquity,  as  perfect  as  the  day  they  were  formed  ; 
whole  skeletons  without  a  limb  disturbed ;  nay. 
the  changed  flesh,  the  developing  embryos,  and 
even  the  very  footsteps  of  primaeval  organisms. 
Thus  the  naturalist  finds  in  the  bowels  of  the  earth 
species  as  well  defined  as,  and  in  some  groups 
of  animals  "more  numerous  than,  those  which 
breathe  the  upper  air.  But,  singularly  enough, 
the  majority  of  these  entombed  species  are  wholly 
1  [See  page  60  Note.} 


T  THE   DARWINIAN  HYPOTHESIS  9 

distinct  from  those  that  now  live.  Nor  is  this  un- 
likeness  without  its  rule  and  order.  As  a  broad 
fact,  the  further  we  go  back  in  time  the  less  the 
buried  species  are  like  existing  forms  ;  and,  the  fur- 
ther apart  the  sets  of  extinct  creatures  are,  the  less 
they  are  like  one  another.  In  other  words,  there 
has  been  a  regular  succession  of  living  beings,  each 
younger  set,  being  in  a  very  broad  and  general 
sense,  somewhat  more  like  those  which  now  live. 

It  was  once  supposed  that  this  succession  had 
been  the  result  of  vast  successive  catastrophes, 
destructions,  and  re-creations  en  masse;  but 
catastrophes  are  now  almost  eliminated  from 
geological,  or  at  least  palaeontological  speculation  ; 
and  it  is  admitted,  on  all  hands,  that  the  seeming 
breaks  in  the  chain  of  being  are  not  absolute,  but 
only  relative  to  our  imperfect  knowledge;  that 
species  have  replaced  species,  not  in  assemblages, 
but  one  by  one ;  and  that,  if  it  were  possible  to 
have  all  the  phenomena  of  the  past  presented  to 
us,  the  convenient  epochs  and  formations  of  the 
geologist,  though  having  a  certain  distinctness, 
would  fade  into  one  another  with  limits  as 
undefinable  as  those  of  the  distinct  and  yet 
separable  colours  of  the  solar  spectrum. 

Such  is  a  brief  summary  of  the  main  truths 
which  have  been  established  concerning  species. 
Are  these  truths  ultimate  and  irresolvable  facts, 
or  are  their  complexities  and  perplexities  the 
mere  expressions  of  a  higher  law  ? 


10  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  i 

A  large  number  of  persons  practically  assume 
the  former  position  to  be  correct.  They  believe 
that  the  writer  of  the  Pentateuch  was  empowered 
and  commissioned  to  teach  us  scientific  as  well  as 
other  truth,  that  the  account  we  find  there  of  the 
creation  of  living  things  is  simply  and  literally 
correct,  and  that  anything  which  seems  to  con- 
tradict it  is,  by  the  nature  of  the  case,  false.  All 
the  phenomena  which  have  been  detailed  are,  on 
this  view,  the  immediate  product  of  a  creative 
fiat  and,  consequently,  are  out  of  the  domain  of 
science  altogether. 

Whether  this  view  prove  ultimately  to  be  true 
or  false,  it  is,  at  any  rate,  not  at  present  sup- 
ported by  what  is  commonly  regarded  as  logical 
proof,  even  if  it  be  capable  of  discussion  by 
reason  ;  and  hence  we  consider  ourselves  at  liberty 
to  pass  it  by,  and  to  turn  to  those  views  which 
profess  to  rest  on  a  scientific  basis  only,  and  there- 
fore admit  of  being  argued  to  their  consequences. 
And  we  do  this  with  the  less  hesitation  as  it  so 
happens  that  those  persons  who  are  practically 
.conversant  with  the  facts  of  the  case  (plainly  a 
considerable  advantage)  have  always  thought  fit 
to  range  themselves  under  the  latter  category. 

The  majority  of  these  competent  persons  have 
up  to  the  present  time  maintained  two  positions — 
the  first,  that  every  species  is,  within  certain  de- 
fined limits,  fixed  and  incapable  of  modification ; 
the  second,  that  every  species  was  originally  pro- 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  11 

duced  by  a  distinct  creative  act.  The  second 
position  is  obviously  incapable  of  proof  or  disproof, 
the  direct  operations  of  the  Creator  not  being 
subjects  of  science ;  and  it  must  therefore  be 
regarded  as  a  corollary  from  the  first,  the  truth 
or  falsehood  of  which  is  a  matter  of  evidence. 
Most  persons  imagine  that  the  arguments  in 
favour  of  it  are  overwhelming ;  but  to  some  few 
minds,  and  these,  it  must  be  confessed,  intellects 
of  no  small  power  and  grasp  of  knowledge,  they 
have  not  brought  conviction.  Among  these 
minds,  that  of  the  famous  naturalist  Lamarck, 
who  possessed  a  greater  acquaintance  with  the 
lower  forms  of  life  than  any  man  of  his  day, 
Cuvier  not  excepted,  and  was  a  good  botanist  to 
boot,  occupies  a  prominent  place. 

Two  facts  appear  to  have  strongly  affected  the 
course  of  thought  of  this  remarkable  man — the 
one,  that  finer  or  stronger  links  of  affinity  connect 
all  living  beings  with  one  another,  and  that  thus 
the  highest  creature  grades  by  multitudinous 
steps  into  the  lowest ;  the  other,  that  an  organ 
may  be  developed  in  particular  directions  by 
exerting  itself  in  particular  ways,  and  that  modi- 
fications once  induced  may  be  transmitted  and 
become  hereditary.  Putting  these  facts  together, 
Lamarck  endeavoured  to  account  for  the  first  by 
the  operation  of  the  second.  Place  an  animal  in 
new  circumstances,  says  he,  and  its  needs  will  be 
altered  ;  the  new  needs  will  create  new  desires,  and 


12  THE   DARWINIAN  HYPOTHESIS  i 

the  attempt  to  gratify  such  desires  will  result  in  an 
appropriate  modification  of  the  organs  exerted. 
Make  a  man  a  blacksmith,  and  his  brachial  muscles 
will  develop  in  accordance  with  the  demands  made 
upon  them,  and  in  like  manner,  says  Lamarck, 
"the  efforts  of  some  short-necked  bird  to  catch 
fish  without  wetting  himself  have,  with  time  and 
perseverance,  given  rise  to  all  our  herons  and 
long-necked  waders." 

The  Lamarckian  hypothesis  has  long  since  been 
justly  condemned,  and  it  is  the  established  prac- 
tice for  every  tyro  to  raise  his  heel  against  the 
carcase  of  the  dead  lion.  But  it  is  rarely  either 
wise  or  instructive  to  treat  even  the  errors  of  a 
really  great  man  with  mere  ridicule,  and  in  the 
present  case  the  logical  form  of  the  doctrine  stands 
on  a  very  different  footing  from  its  substance. 

If  species  have  really  arisen  by  the  operation 
of  natural  conditions,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  find 
those  conditions  now  at  work ;  we  ought  to  be 
able  to  discover  in  nature  some  power  adequate 
to  modify  any  given  kind  of  animal  or  plant  in 
such  a  manner  as  to  give  rise  to  another  kind, 
which  would  be  admitted  by  naturalists  as  a 
distinct  species.  Lamarck  imagined  that  he  had 
discovered  this  vera  causa  in  the  admitted  facts 
that  some  organs  may  be  modified  by  exercise ; 
and  that  modifications,  once  produced,  are  capable 
of  hereditary  transmission.  It  does  not  seem  to 
have  occurred  to  him  to  inquire  whether  there  is 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  13 

any  reason  to  believe  that  there  are  any  limits  to 
the  amount  of  modification  producible,  or  to  ask 
how  long  an  animal  is  likely  to  endeavour  to 
gratify  an  impossible  desire.  The  bird,  in  our 
example,  would  surely  have  renounced  fish  dinners 
long  before  it  had  produced  the  least  effect  on  leg 
or  neck. 

Since  Lamarck's  time,  almost  all  competent 
naturalists  have  left  speculations  on  the  origin  of 
species  to  such  dreamers  as  the  author  of  the 
"  Vestiges,"  by  whose  well-intentioned  efforts  the 
Lamarckian  theory  received  its  final  condemnation 
in  the  minds  of  all  sound  thinkers.  Notwith- 
standing this  silence,  however,  the  transmutation 
theory,  as  it  has  been  called,  has  been  a  "  skeleton 
in  the  closet"  to  many  an  honest  zoologist  and 
botanist  who  had  a  soul  above  the  mere  naming  of 
dried  plants  and  skins.  Surely,  has  such  an  one 
thought,  nature  is  a  mighty  and  consistent  whole, 
and  the  providential  order  established  in  the 
world  of  life  must,  if  we  could  only  see  it  rightly, 
be  consistent  with  that  dominant  over  the  multi- 
form shapes  of  brute  matter.  But  what  is  the 
history  of  astronomy,  of  all  the  branches  of  physics, 
of  chemistry,  of  medicine,  but  a  narration  of  the 
steps  by  which  the  human  mind  has  been  com- 
pelled, often  sorely  against  its  will,  to  recognise 
the  operation  of  secondary  causes  in  events  where 
ignorance  beheld  an  immediate  intervention  of  a 
higher  power  ?  And  when  we  know  that  living 


14-  THE   DAEWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  i 

things  are  formed  of  the  same  elements  as  the 
inorganic  world,  that  they  act  and  react  upon  it, 
bound  by  a  thousand  ties  of  natural  piety,  is  it 
probable,  nay  is  it  possible,  that  they,  and  they 
alone,  should  have  no  order  in  their  seeming 
disorder,  no  unity  in  their  seeming  multiplicity, 
should  suffer  no  explanation  by  the  discovery 
of  some  central  and  sublime  law  of  mutual 
connection  ? 

Questions  of  this  kind  have  assuredly  often  arisen, 
but  it  might  have  been  long  before  they  received 
such  expression  as  would  have  commanded  the 
respect  and  attention  of  the  scientific  world,  had 
it  not  been  for  the  publication  of  the  work  which 
prompted  this  article.  Its  author,  Mr.  Darwin, 
inheritor  of  a  once  celebrated  name,  won  his  spurs 
in  science  when  most  of  those  now  distinguished 
were  young  men,  and  has  for  the  last  twenty 
years  held  a  place  in  the  front  ranks  of  British 
philosophers.  After  a  circumnavigatory  voyage, 
undertaken  solely  for  the  love  of  his  science,  Mr. 
Darwin  published  a  series  of  researches  which  at 
once  arrested  the  attention  of  naturalists  and 
geologists ;  his  generalisations  have  since  received 
ample  confirmation  and  now  command  universal 
assent,  nor  is  it  questionable  that  they  have  had 
the  most  important  influence  on  the  progress  of 
science.  More  recently  Mr.  Darwin,  with  a 
versatility  which  is  among  the  rarest  of  gifts, 
turned  his  attention  to  a  most  difficult  question  of 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  15 

zoology  and  minute  anatomy;  and  no  living 
naturalist  and  anatomist  has  published  a  better 
monograph  than  that  which  resulted  from  his 
labours.  Such  a  man,  at  all  events,  has  not 
entered  the  sanctuary  with  unwashed  hands,  and 
when  he  lays  before  us  the  results  of  twenty 
years'  investigation  and  reflection  we  must  listen 
even  though  we  be  disposed  to  strike.  But,  in 
reading  his  work,  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
attention  which  might  at  first  be  dutifully,  soon 
becomes  willingly,  given,  so  clear  is  the  author's 
thought,  so  outspoken  his  conviction,  so  honest 
and  fair  the  candid  expression  of  his  doubts. 
Those  who  would  judge  the  book  must  read  it : 
we  shall  endeavour  only  to  make  its  line  of  argu- 
ment and  its  philosophical  position  intelligible  to 
the  general  reader  in  our  own  way. 

The  Baker  Street  Bazaar  has  just  been  exhibit- 
ing its  familiar  annual  spectacle.  Straight-backed, 
small-headed,  big-barrelled  oxen,  as  dissimilar 
from  any  wild  species  as  can  well  be  imagined, 
contended  for  attention  and  praise  with  sheep  of 
half-a-dozen  different  breeds  and  styes  of  bloated 
preposterous  pigs,  no  more  like  a  wild  boar  or  sow 
than  a  city  alderman  is  like  an  ourang-outang. 
The  cattle  show  has  been,  and  perhaps  may  again 
be,  succeeded  by  a  poultry  show,  of  whose  crowing 
and  clucking  prodigies  it  can  only  be  certainly 
predicated  that  they  will  be  very  unlike  the 
aboriginal  Phasianus  gallus.  If  the  seeker  after 


16  THE   DARWINIAN  HYPOTHESIS  i 

animal  anomalies  is  not  satisfied,  a  turn  or  two  in 
Seven  Dials  will  convince  him  that  the  breeds  of 
pigeons  are  quite  as  extraordinary  and  unlike  one 
another  and  their  parent  stock,  while  the  Horti- 
cultural Society  will  provide  him  with  any  number 
of  corresponding  vegetable  aberrations  from 
nature's  types.  He  will  learn  with  no  little 
surprise,  too,  in  the  course  of  his  travels,  that  the 
proprietors  and  producers  of  these  animal  and 
vegetable  anomalies  regard  them  as  distinct 
species,  with  a  firm  belief,  the  strength  of  which 
is  exactly  proportioned  to  their  ignorance  of 
scientific  biology,  and  which  is  the  more  remark- 
able as  they  are  all  proud  of  their  skill  in  originat- 
ing such  "  species." 

On  careful  inquiry  it  is  found  that  all  these,  and 
the  many  other  artificial  breeds  or  races  of  animals 
and  plants,  have  been  produced  by  one  method. 
The  breeder — and  a  skilful  one  must  be  a  person 
of  much  sagacity  and  natural  or  acquired  perceptive 
faculty — notes  some  slight  difference,  arising  he 
knows  not  how,  in  some  individuals  of  his  stock. 
If  he  wish  to  perpetuate  the  difference,  to  form  a 
breed  with  the  peculiarity  in  question  strongly 
marked,  he  selects  such  male  and  female  indi- 
viduals as  exhibit  the  desired  character,  and  breeds 
from  them.  Their  offspring  are  then  carefully 
examined,  and  those  which  exhibit  the  peculiarity 
the  most  distinctly  are  selected  for  breeding ;  and 
this  operation  is  repeated  until  the  desired  amount 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  17 

of  divergence  from  the  primitive  stock  is  reached. 
It  is  then  found  that  by  continuing  the  process  of 
selection— always  breeding,  that  is,  from  well- 
marked  forms,  and  allowing  no  impure  crosses  to 
interfere — a  race  may  be  formed,  the  tendency  of 
which  to  reproduce  itself  is  exceedingly  strong; 
nor  is  the  limit  to  the  amount  of  divergence  which 
may  be  thus  produced  known ;  but  one  thing  is 
certain,  that,  if  certain  breeds  of  dogs,  or  of  pigeons, 
or  of  horses,  were  known  only  in  a  fossil  state,  no 
naturalist  would  hesitate  in  regarding  them  as 
distinct  species. 

But  in  all  these  cases  we  have  human  interfer- 
ence. Without  the  breeder  there  would  be  no 
selection,  and  without  the  selection  no  race. 
Before  admitting  the  possibility  of  natural  species 
having  originated  in  any  similar  way,  it  must  be 
proved  that  there  is  in  Nature  some  power  which 
takes  the  place  of  man,  and  performs  a  selection 
sud  sponte.  It  is  the  claim  of  Mr.  Darwin  that  he 
professes  to  have  discovered  the  existence  and  the 
modiis  operandi  of  this  "  natural  selection,"  as  he 
terms  it ;  and,  if  he  be  right,  the  process  is  per- 
fectly simple  and  comprehensible,  and  irresistibly 
deducible  from  very  familiar  but  well  nigh  for- 
gotten facts. 

Who,  for  instance,  has  duly  reflected  upon  all 
the  consequences  of  the  marvellous  struggle  for 
existence  which  is  daily  and  hourly  going  on 
among  living  beings  ?  Not  only  does  every  animal 


18  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  i 

live  at  the  expense  of  some  other  animal  or  plant, 
but  the  very  plants  are  at  war.  The  ground  is 
full  of  seeds  that  cannot  rise  into  seedlings ;  the 
seedlings  rob  one  another  of  air,  light  and  water, 
the  strongest  robber  winning  the  day,  and  ex- 
tinguishing his  competitors.  Year  after  year,  the 
wild  animals  with  which  man  never  interferes  are, 
on  the  average,  neither  more  nor  less  numerous 
than  they  were  ;  and  yet  we  know  that  the  annual 
produce  of  every  pair  is  from  one  to  perhaps  a 
million  young ;  so  that  it  is  mathematically  certain 
that,  on  the  average,  as  many  are  killed  by  natural 
causes  as  are  born  every  year,  and  those  only  escape 
which  happen  to  be  a  little  better  fitted  to  resist 
destruction  than  those  which  die.  The  individuals 
of  a  species  are  like  the  crew  of  a  foundered  ship, 
and  none  but  good  swimmers  have  a  chance  of 
reaching  the  land. 

Such  being  unquestionably  the  necessary  con- 
ditions under  which  living  creatures  exist,  Mr. 
Darwin  discovers  in  them  the  instrument  of  natural 
selection.  Suppose  that  in  the  midst  of  this  in- 
cessant competition  some  individuals  of  a  species 
(A)  present  accidental  variations  which  happen  to 
fit  them  a  little  better  than  their  fellows  for  the 
struggle  in  which  they  are  engaged,  then  the 
chances  are  in  favour,  not  only  of  these  individuals 
being  better  nourished  than  the  others,  but  of 
their  predominating  over  their  fellows  in  other 
ways,  and  of  having  a  better  chance  of  leaving 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  19 

offspring,  which  will  of  course  tend  to  reproduce 
the  peculiarities  of  their  parents.  Their  offspring 
will,  by  a  parity  of  reasoning,  tend  to  predominate 
over  their  contemporaries,  and  there  being  (sup- 
pose) no  room  for  more  than  one  species  such  as 
A,  the  weaker  variety  will  eventually  be  destroyed 
by  the  new  destructive  influence  which  is  thrown 
into  the  scale,  and  the  stronger  will  take  its  place. 
Surrounding  conditions  remaining  unchanged,  the 
new  variety  (which  we  may  call  B) — supposed,  for 
argument's  sake,  to  be  the  best  adapted  for  these 
conditions  which  can  be  got  out  of  the  original 
stock — will  remain  unchanged,  all  accidental  devia- 
tions from  the  type  becoming  at  once  extinguished, 
as  less  fit  for  their  post  than  B  itself.  The  tend- 
ency of  B  to  persist  will  grow  with  its  persistence 
through  successive  generations,  and  it  will  acquire 
all  the  characters  of  a  new  species. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  conditions  of  life 
change  in  any  degree,  however  slight,  B  may  no 
longer  be  that  form  which  is  best  adapted  to  with- 
stand their  destructive,  and  profit  by  their  sus- 
taining, influence  ;  in  which  case  i£  it  should  give 
rise  to  a  more  competent  variety  (C),  this  will  take 
its  place  and  become  a  new  species  ;  and  thus,  by 
natural  selection,  the  species  B  and  C  will  be  suc- 
cessively derived  from  A. 

That  this  most  ingenious  hypothesis  enables  us 
to  give  a  reason  for  many  apparent  anomalies  in 
the  distribution  of  living  beings  in  time  and  space, 


20  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  i 

and  that  it  is  not  contradicted  by  the  main  phen- 
omena of  life  and  organisation  appear  to  us  to  be 
unquestionable ;  and,  so  far,  it  must  be  admitted  to 
have  an  immense  advantage  over  any  of  its  prede- 
cessors. But  it  is  quite  another  matter  to  affirm 
absolutely  either  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  views  at  the  present  stage  of  the  inquiry. 
Goethe  has  an  excellent  aphorism  defining  that 
state  of  mind  which  he  calls  "  Thiitige  Skepsis  " 
— active  doubt.  It  is  doubt  which  so  loves  truth 
that  it  neither  dares  rest  in  doubting,  nor  extin- 
guish itself  by  unjustified  belief;  and  we  commend 
this  state  of  mind  to  students  of  species,  with 
respect  to  Mr.  Darwin's  or  any  other  hypothesis, 
as  to  their  origin.  The  combined  investigations 
of  another  twenty  years  may,  perhaps,  enable 
naturalists  to  say  whether  the  modifying  causes 
and  the  selective  power,  which  Mr.  Darwin  has 
satisfactorily  shown  to  exist  in  Nature,  are  com- 
petent to  produce  all  the  effects  he  ascribes  to 
them ;  or  whether,  on  the  other  hand,  he  has  been 
led  to  over-estimate  the  value  of  the  principle  of 
natural  selection,  as  greatly  as  Lamarck  over- 
estimated his  vera  causa  of  modification  by  exercise. 
But  there  is,  at  all  events,  one  advantage  pos- 
sessed by  the  more  recent  writer  over  his  pre- 
decessor. Mr.  Darwin  abhors  mere  speculation  as 
nature  abhors  a  vacuum.  He  is  as  greedy  of  cases 
and  precedents  as  any  constitutional  lawyer,  and 
all  the  principles  he  lays  down  are  capable  of  being 


I  THE   DARWINIAN   HYPOTHESIS  21 

brought  to  the  test  of  observation  and  experiment. 
The  path  he  bids  us  follow  professes  to  be,  not  a 
mere  airy  track,  fabricated  of  ideal  cobwebs,  but  a 
solid  and  broad  bridge  of  facts.  If  it  be  so,  it 
will  carry  us  safely  over  many  a  chasm  in  our 
knowledge,  and  lead  us  to  a  region  free  from  the 
snares  of  those  fascinating  but  barren  virgins,  the 
Final  Causes,  against  whom  a  high  authority  has  so 
justly  warned  us.  "  My  sons,  dig  in  the  vineyard," 
were  the  last  words  of  the  old  man  in  the  fable  : 
and,  though  the  sons  found  no  treasure,  they  made 
their  fortunes  by  the  grapes. 


II 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES 
[1860] 

MR.  DARWIN'S  long-standing  and  well-earned 
scientific  eminence  probably  renders  him  indiffer- 
ent to  that  social  notoriety  which  passes  by  the 
name  of  success ;  but  if  the  calm  spirit  of  the 
philosopher  have  not  yet  wholly  superseded  the 
ambition  and  the  vanity  of  the  carnal  man  within 
him,  he  must  be  well  satisfied  with  the  results  of 
his  venture  in  publishing  the  "  Origin  of  Species." 
Overflowing  the  narrow  bounds  of  purely  scientific 
circles,  the  "  species  question  "  divides  with  Italy 
and  the  Volunteers  the  attention  of  general 
society.  Everybody  has  read  Mr.  Darwin's  book, 
or,  at  least,  has  given  an  opinion  upon  its  merits 
or  demerits  ;  pietists,  whether  lay  or  ecclesiastic, 
decry  it  with  the  mild  railing  which  sounds  so 
charitable ;  bigots  denounce  it  with  ignorant 
invective ;  old  ladies  of  both  sexes  consider  it  a 


Ir  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  23 

decidedly  dangerous  book,  and  even  savants,  who 
have  no  better  mud  to  throw,  quote  antiquated 
writers  to  show  that  its  author  is  no  better  than 
an  ape  himself  ;  while  every  philosophical  thinker 
hails  it  as  a  veritable  Whit  worth  gun  in  the 
armoury  of  liberalism  ;  and  all  competent  natural- 
ists and  physiologists,  whatever  their  opinions  as 
to  the  ultimate  fate  of  the  doctrines  put  forth, 
acknowledge  that  the  work  in  which  th£y  are 
embodied  is  a  solid  contribution  to  knowledge 
and  inaugurates  a  new  epoch  in  natural  history. 

Nor  has  the  discussion  of  the  subject  been 
restrained  within  the  limits  of  conversation. 
When  the  public  is  eager  and  interested,  reviewers 
must  minister  to  its  wants ;  and  the  genuine 
litterateur  is  too  much  in  the  habit  of  acquiring 
his  knowledge  from  the  book  he  judges — as  the 
Abyssinian  is  said  to  provide  himself  with  steaks 
from  the  ox  which  carries  him — to  be  withheld 
from  criticism  of  a  profound  scientific  work  by 
the  mere  want  of  the  requisite  preliminary  scien- 
tific acquirement  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
men  of  science  who  wish  well  to  the  new  views, 
no  less  than  those  who  dispute  their  validity,  have 
naturally  sought  opportunities  of  expressing  their 
opinions.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  almost 
all  the  critical  journals  have  noticed  Mr.  Darwin's 
work  at  greater  or  less  length  ;  and  so  many  dis- 
quisitions, of  every  degree  of  excellence,  from  the 
poor  product  of  ignorance,,  too  often  stimulated  by 

31 


24  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

prejudice,  to  the  fair  and  thoughtful  essay  of  the 
candid  student  of  Nature,  have  appeared,  that  it 
seems  an  almost  hopeless  task  to  attempt  to  say 
anything  new  upon  the  question. 

But  it  may  be  doubted  if  the  knowledge  and 
acumen  of  prejudged  scientific  opponents,  and  the 
subtlety  of  orthodox  special  pleaders,  have  yet 
exerted  their  full  force  in  mystifying  the  real  issues 
of  the  'great  controversy  which  has  been  set  afoot, 
and  whose  end  is  hardly  likely  to  be  seen  by  this 
generation  ;  so  that,  at  this  eleventh  hour,  and  even 
failing  anything  new,  it  may  be  useful  to  state 
afresh  that  which  is  true,  and  to  put  the  funda- 
mental positions  advocated  by  Mr.  Darwin  in  such 
a  form  that  they  may  be  grasped  by  those  whose 
special  studies  lie  in  other  directions.  And  the 
adoption  of  this  course  may  be  the  more  advisable, 
because,  notwithstanding  its  great  deserts,  and 
indeed  partly  on  account  of  them,  the  "  Origin  of 
Species  "  is  by  no  means  an  easy  book  to  read — if 
by  reading  is  implied  the  full  comprehension  of  an 
author's  meaning. 

We  do  not  speak  jestingly  in  saying  that  it  is 
Mr.  Darwin's  misfortune  to  know  more  about  the 
question  he  has  taken  up  than  any  man  living. 
Personally  and  practically  exercised  in  zoology,  in 
minute  anatomy,  in  geology  ;  a  student  of  geogra- 
phical distribution,  not  on  maps  and  in  museums 
only,  but  by  long  voyages  and  laborious  collection ; 
having  largely  advanced  each  of  these  branches  of 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  25 

science,  and  having  spent  many  years  in  gathering 
and  sifting  materials  for  his  present  work,  the 
store  of  accurately  registered  facts  upon  which  the 
author  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  is  able  to  draw 
at  will  is  prodigious. 

But  this  very  superabundance  of  matter  must 
have  been  embarrassing  to  a  writer  who,  for  the 
present,  can  only  put  forward  an  abstract  of  his 
views ;  and  thence  it  arises,  perhaps,  that  notwith- 
standing the  clearness  of  the  style,  those  who 
attempt  fairly  to  digest  the  book  find  much  of  it 
a  sort  of  intellectual  pemmican — a  mass  of  facts 
crushed  and  pounded  into  shape,  rather  than  held 
together  by  the  ordinary  medium  of  an  obvious 
logical  bond;  due  attention  will,  without  doubt, 
discover  this  bond,  but  it  is  often  hard  to  find. 

Again,  from  sheer  want  of  room,  much  has  to 
be  taken  for  granted  which  might  readily  enough 
be  proved  ;  and  hence,  while  the  adept,  who  can 
supply  the  missing  links  in  the  evidence  from  his 
own  knowledge,  discovers  fresh  proof  of  the  singu- 
lar thoroughness  with  which  all  difficulties  have 
been  considered  and  all  unjustifiable  suppositions 
avoided,  at  every  reperusal  of  Mr.  Darwin's  preg- 
nant paragraphs,  the  novice  in  biology  is  apt  to 
complain  of  the  frequency  of  what  he  fancies  is 
gratuitous  assumption. 

Thus  while  it  may  be  doubted  if,  for  some  years, 
any  one  is  likely  to  be  competent  to  pronounce 
judgment  on  all  the  issues  raised  by  Mr.  Darwin, 


26  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  n 

there  is  assuredly  abundant  room  for  him,  who, 
assuming  the  humbler,  though  perhaps  as  useful, 
office  of  an  interpreter  between  the  "  Origin  of 
Species"  and  the  public,  contents  himself  with 
endeavouring  to  point  out  the  nature  of  the  prob- 
lems which  it  discusses ;  to  distinguish  between 
the  ascertained  facts  and  the  theoretical  views 
which  it  contains  ;  and  finally,  to  show  the  extent 
to  which  the  explanation  it  offers  satisfies  the  re- 
quirements of  scientific  logic.  At  any  rate,  it  is 
this  office  which  we  purpose  to  undertake  in  the 
following  pages. 

It  may  be  safely  assumed  that  our  readers  have 
a  general  conception  of  the  nature  of  the  objects 
to  which  the  word  "  species  "  is  applied  ;  but  it 
has,  perhaps,  occurred  to  a  few,  even  to  those  who 
are  naturalists  ex  professo,  to  reflect,  that,  as  com- 
monly employed,  the  term  has  a  double  sense  and 
denotes  two  very  different  orders  of  relations. 
When  we  call  a  group  of  animals,  or  of  plants.^ 
species,  we  may  imply  thereby,  either  that  all 
these  animals  or  plants  have  some  common  peculi- 
arity of  form  or  structure  ;  or,  we  may  mean  that 
they  possess  some  common  functional  character. 
That  part  of  biological  science  which  deals  with 
form  and  structure  is  called  Morphology — that 
which  concerns  itself  with  function,  Physiology — 
so  that  we  may  conveniently  speak  of  these  two 
senses,  or  aspects,  of  "  species  " — the  one  as  mor- 
phological, the  other  as  physiological.  Regarded 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  27 

from  the  former  point  of  view,  a  species  is  nothing 
more  than  a  kind  of  animal  or  plant,  which  is 
distinctly  definable  from  all  others,  by  certain 
constant,  and  not  merely  sexual,  morphological 
peculiarities.  Thus  horses  form  a  species,  because 
the  group  of  animals  to  which  that  name  is  applied 
is  distinguished  from  all  others  in  the  world  by 
the  following  constantly  associated  characters. 
They  have — 1,  A  vertebral  column  ;  2,  Mammae ; 
3,  A  placental  embryo ;  4,  Four  legs  ;  5,  A  single 
well-developed  toe  in  each  foot  provided  with  a 
hoof;  6,  A  bushy  tail;  and  7,  Callosities  on  the 
inner  sides  of  both  the  fore  and  the  hind  legs. 
The  asses,  again,  form  a  distinct  species,  because, 
with  the  same  characters,  as  far  as  the  fifth  in  the 
above  list,  all  asses  have  tufted  tails,  and  have 
callosities  only  on  the  inner  side  of  the  fore-legs. 
If  animals  were  discovered  having  the  general 
characters  of  the  horse,  but  sometimes  with  cal- 
losities only  on  the  fore-legs,  and  more  or  less 
tufted  tails ;  or  animals  having  the  general  char- 
acters of  the  ass,  but  with  more  or  less  bushy 
tails,  and  sometimes  with  callosities  on  both  pairs 
of  legs,  besides  being  intermediate  in  other  re- 
spects— the  two  species  would  have  to  be  merged 
into  one.  They  could  no  longer  be  regarded  as 
morphologically  distinct  species,  for  they  would 
not  be  distinctly  definable  one  from  the  other. 

However  bare    and  simple   this  definition  of 
species  may  appear  to  be,  we  confidently  appeal  to 


28  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  H 

all  practical  naturalists,  whether  zoologists,  botan- 
ists, or  paleontologists,  to  say  if,  jn  the  vast 
majority  of  cases,  they  know,  or  mean  to  affirm, 
anything  more  of  the  group  of  animals  or  plants 
they  so  denominate  than  what  has  just  been  stated. 
Even  the  most  decided  advocates  of  the  received 
doctrines  respecting  species  admit  this. 

"  I  apprehend,"  says  Professor  Owen,1  "that  few  naturalists 
nowadays,  in  describing  and  proposing  a  name  for  what  they 
call  '  a  new  species,'  use  that  term  to  signify  what  was  meant  by 
it  twenty  or  thirty  years  ago  ;  that  is,  an  originally  distinct 
creation,  maintaining  its  primitive  distinction  by  obstructive 
generative  peculiarities.  The  proposer  of  the  new  species  now 
intends  to  state  no  more  than  he  actually  knows ;  as,  for 
example,  that  the  differences  on  which  he  founds  the  specific 
character  are  constant  in  individuals  of  both  sexes,  so  far  as 
observation  has  reached  ;  and  that  they  are  not  due  to  domes- 
tication or  to  artificially  superinduced  external  circumstances,  or 
to  any  outward  influence  within  his  cognizance  ;  that  the  species 
is  wild,  or  is  such  as  it  appears  by  Nature. " 

If  we  consider,  in  fact,  that  by  far  the  largest 
proportion  of  recorded  existing  species  are  known 
only  by  the  study  of  their  skins,  or  bones,  or  other 
lifeless  exuviae  ;  that  we  are  acquainted  with  none, 
or  next  to  none,  of  their  physiological  peculiarities, 
beyond  those  which  can  be  deduced  from  their 
structure,  or  are  open  to  cursory  observation ;  and 
that  we  cannot  hope  to  learn  more  of  any  of  those 
extinct  forms  of  life  which  now  constitute  no 
inconsiderable  proportion  of  the  known  Flora  and 

1  "  On  the  Osteology  of  the  Chimpanzees  and  Orangs  "j 
Transactions  of  the  Zoological  Society,  1858. 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  29 

Fauna  of  the  world  :  it  is  obvious  that  the  defini- 
tions of  these  species  can  be  only  of  a  purely 
structural,  or  morphological,  character.  It  is 
probable  that  naturalists  would  have  avoided 
much  confusion  of  ideas  if  they  had  more  fre- 
quently borne  the  necessary  limitations  of  our 
knowledge  in  mind.  But  while  it  may  safely  be 
admitted  that  we  are  acquainted  with  only  the 
morphological  characters  of  the  vast  majority  of 
species — the  functional  or  physiological,  peculiari- 
ties of  a  few  have  been  carefully  investigated,  and 
the  result  of  that  study  forms  a  large  and  most 
interesting  portion  of  the  physiology  of  reproduc- 
tion. 

The  student  of  Nature  wonders  the  more  and  is 
astonished  the  less,  the  more  conversant  he  becomes 
with  her  operations ;  but  of  all  the  perennial 
miracles  she  offers  to  his  inspection,  perhaps  the 
most  worthy  of  admiration  is  the  development  of 
a  plant  or  of  an  animal  from  its  embryo.  Examine 
the  recently  laid  egg  of  some  common  animal, 
such  as  a  salamander  or  newt.  It  is  a  minute 
spheroid  in  which  the  best  microscope  will  reveal 
nothing  but  a  structureless  sac,  enclosing  a  glairy 
fluid,  holding  granules  in  suspension.1  But  strange 
possibilities  lie  dormant  in  that  semi-fluid  globule. 
Let  a  moderate  supply  of  warmth  reach  its  watery 
cradle,  and  the  plastic  matter  undergoes  changes 

1  [When  this  sentence  was  written,  it  was  generally  believed 
that  the  original  nucleus  of  the  egg  (the  germinal  vesicle) 
disappeared.  1893.] 


30  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

so  rapid,  yet  so  steady  and  purposelike  in  their 
succession,  that  one  can  only  compare  them  to 
those  operated  by  a  skilled  modeller  upon  a  form- 
less lump  of  clay.  As  with  an  invisible  trowel, 
the  mass  is  divided  and  subdivided  into  smaller 
and  smaller  portions,  until  it  is  reduced  to  an 
aggregation  of  granules  not  too  large  to  build  withal 
the  finest  fabrics  of  the  nascent  organism.  And, 
then,  it  is  as  if  a  delicate  finger  traced  out  the  line 
to  be  occupied  by  the  spinal  column,  and  moulded 
the  contour  of  the  body  ;  pinching  up  the  head 
at  one  end,  the  tail  at  the  other,  and  fashioning 
flank  and  limb  into  due  salamandrine  proportions, 
in  so  artistic  a  way,  that,  after  watching  the  process 
hour  by  hour,  one  is  almost  involuntarily  possessed 
bv  the  notion,  that  some  more  subtle  aid  to  vision 
than  an  achromatic,  would  show  the  hidden  artist, 
with  his  plan  before  him,  striving  with  skilful 
manipulation  to  perfect  his  work. 

As  life  advances,  and  the  young  amphibian 
ranges  the  waters,  the  terror  of  his  insect  con- 
temporaries, not  only  are  the  nutritious  particles 
supplied  by  its  prey,  by  the  addition  of  which  to 
its  frame,  growth  takes  place,  laid  down,  each  in 
its  proper  spot,  and  in  such  due  proportion  to  the 
rest,  as  to  reproduce  the  form,  the  colour,  and  the 
size,  characteristic  of  the  parental  stock  ;  but  even 
the  wonderful  powers  of  reproducing  lost  parts 
possessed  by  these  animals  are  controlled  by  the 
same  governing  tendency.  Cut  off  the  legs,  the 


n  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  31 

tail,  the  jaws,  separately  or  all  together,  and,  as 
Spallanzani  showed  long  ago,  these  parts  not  only 
grow  again,  but  the  redintegrated  limb  is  formed 
on  the  same  type  as  those  which  were  lost.  The 
new  jaw,  or  leg,  is  a  newt's,  and  never  by  any 
accident  more  like  that  of  a  frog.  What  is  true 
of  the  newt  is  true  of  every  animal  and  of  every 
plant ;  the  acorn  tends  to  build  itself  up  again 
into  a  woodland  giant  such  as  that  from  whose 
twig  it  fell ;  the  spore  of  the  humblest  lichen 
reproduces  the  green  or  brown  incrustation  which 
gave  it  birth  ;  and  at  the  other  end  of  the  scale  of 
life,  the  child  that  resembled  neither  the  paternal 
nor  the  maternal  side  of  the  house  would  be 
regarded  as  a  kind  of  monster. 

So  that  the  one  end  to  which,  in  all  living 
beings,  the  formative  impulse  is  tending — the  one 
scheme  which  the  Archaeus  of  the  old  speculators 
strives  to  carry  out,  seems  to  be  to  mould  the 
offspring  into  the  likeness  of  the  parent.  It  is 
the  first  great  law  of  reproduction,  that  the 
offspring  tends  to  resemble  its  parent  or  parents, 
more  closely  than  anything  else. 

Science  will  some  day  show  us  how  this  law  is  a 
necessary  consequence  of  the  more  general  laws 
which  govern  matter ;  but,  for  the  present,  more 
can  hardly  be  said  than  that  it  appears  to  be  iii 
harmony  with  them.  -  We  know  that  the  phe- 
nomena of  vitality  are  not  something  apart  from 
other  physical  phenomena,  but  one  with  them ; 


32  THE  OEIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

and  matter  and  force  are  the  two  names  of  the 
one  artist  who  fashions  the  living  as  well  as  the 
lifeless.  Hence  living  bodies  should  obey  the 
same  great  laws  as  other  matter — nor,  throughout 
Nature,  is  there  a  law  of  wider  application  than 
this,  that  a  body  impelled  by  two  forces  takes  the 
direction  of  their  resultant.  But  living  bodies 
may  be  regarded  as  nothing  but  extremely  complex 
bundles  of  forces  held  in  a  mass  of  matter,  as  the 
complex  forces  of  a  magnet  are  held  in  the  steel 
by  its  coercive  force  ;  and,  since  the  differences 
of  sex  are  comparatively  slight,  or,  in  other  words, 
the  sum  of  the  forces  in  each  has  a  very  similar 
tendency,  their  resultant,  the  offspring,  may  reason- 
ably be  expected  to  deviate  but  little  from  a  course 
parallel  to  either,  or  to  both. 

Represent  the  reason  of  the  law  to  ourselves  by 
what  physical  metaphor  or  analogy  we  will,  how- 
ever, the  great  matter  is  to  apprehend  its  existence 
and  the  importance  of  the  consequences  deducible 
from  it.  For  things  which  are  like  to  the  same 
are  like  to  one  another ;  and  if,  in  a  great  series  of 
generations,  every  offspring  is  like  its  parent,  it 
follows  that  all  the  offspring  and  all  the  parents 
must  be  like  one  another;  and  that,  given  an 
original  parental  stock,  with  the  opportunity  of 
undisturbed  multiplication,  the  law  in  question 
necessitates  the  production,  in  course  of  time,  of 
an  indefinitely  large  group,  the  whole  of  the  mem- 
bers of  which  are  at  once  very  similar  and  are  blood 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  33 

relations,  having  descended  from  the  same  parent, 
or  pair  of  parents.  The  proof  that  all  the  members 
of  any  given  group  of  animals,  or  plants,  had  thus 
descended,  would  be  ordinarily  considered  sufficient 
to  entitle  them  to  the  rank  of  physiological  species, 
for  most  physiologists  consider  species  to  be  de- 
finable as  "the  offspring  of  a  single  primitive 
stock." 

But  though  it  is  quite  true  that  all  those 
groups  we  call  species  may,  according  to  the 
known  laws  of  reproduction,  have  descended  from 
a  single  stock,  and  though  it  is  very  likely  they 
really  have  done  so,  yet  this  conclusion  rests  on 
deduction  and  can  hardly  hope  to  establish  itself 
upon  a  basis  of  observation.  And  the  primitive- 
ness  of  the  supposed  single  stock,  which,  after  all, 
is  the  essential  part  of  the  matter,  is  not  only  a 
hypothesis,  but  one  which  has  not  a  shadow  of 
foundation,  if  by  "  primitive  "  be  meant  "  indepen- 
dent of  any  other  living  being."  A  scientific 
definition,  of  which  an  unwarrantable  hypothesis 
forms  an  essential  part,  carries  its  condemnation 
within  itself;  but,  even  supposing  such  a 
definition  were,  in  form,  tenable,  the  physiologist 
who  should  attempt  to  apply  it  in  Nature  would 
soon  find  himself  involved  in  great,  if  not  in- 
extricable, difficulties.  As  we  have  said,  it  is 
indubitable  that  offspring  tend  to  resemble  the 
parental  organism,  but  it  is  equally  true  that  the 
similarity  attained  never  amounts  to  identity 


34  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

either  in  form  or  in  structure.  There  is  always  a 
certain  amount  of  deviation,  not  only  from  the 
precise  characters  of  a  single  parent,  but  when,  as 
in  most  animals  and  many  plants,  the  sexes  are 
lodged  in  distinct  individuals,  from  an  exact  mean 
between  the  two  parents.  And  indeed,  on 
general  principles,  this  slight  deviation  seems  as 
intelligible  as  the  general  similarity,  if  we  reflect 
how  complex  the  co-operating  "  bundles  of  forces  " 
are,  and  how  improbable  it  is  that,  in  any  case, 
their  true  resultant  shall  coincide  with  any  mean 
between  the  more  obvious  characters  of  the  two 
parents.  Whatever  be  its  cause,  however,  the 
co-existence  of  this  tendency  to  minor  variation 
with  the  tendency  to  general  similarity,  is  of  vast 
importance  in  its  bearing  on  the  question  of  the 
origin  of  species. 

As  a  general  rule,  the  extent  to  which  an 
offspring  differs  from  its  parent  is  slight  enough ; 
but,  occasionally,  the  amount  of  difference  is  much 
more  strongly  marked,  and  then  the  divergent 
offspring  receives  the  name  of  a  Variety.  Multi- 
tudes, of  what  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  are 
such  varieties,  are  known,  but  the  origin  of  very 
few  has  been  accurately  recorded,  and  of  these  we 
will  select  two  as  more  especially  illustrative  of 
the  main  features  of  variation.  The  first  of  them 
is  that  of  the  "  Ancon "  or  "  Otter "  sheep,  of 
which  a  careful  account  is  given  by  Colonel 
David  Humphreys,  JF.R.S.,  in  a  letter  to  Sir 


II  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  35 

Joseph  Banks,  published  in  the  "  Philosophical 
Transactions  "  for  1813.  It  appears  that  one  Seth 
Wright,  the  proprietor  of  a  farm  on  the  banks 
of  the  Charles  River,  in  Massachusetts,  possessed 
a  flock  of  fifteen  ewes  and  a  ram  of  the  ordinary 
kind.  In  the  year  1791,  one  of  the  ewes 
presented  her  owner  with  a  male  lamb,  differing, 
for  no  assignable  reason,  from  its  parents  by  a 
proportionally  long  body  and  short  bandy  legs, 
whence  it  was  unable  to  emulate  its  relatives  in 
those  sportive  leaps  over  the  neighbours'  fences, 
in  which  they  were  in  the  habit  of  indulging, 
much  to  the  good  farmer's  vexation. 

The  second  case  is  that  detailed  by  a  no  less 
unexceptionable  authority  than  Reaumur,  in  his 
"Art  de  faire  eclore  les  Poulets."  A  Maltese 
couple,  named  Kelleia,  whose  hands  and  feet  were 
constructed  upon  the  ordinary  human  model,  had 
born  to  them  a  son,  Gratio,  who  possessed  six  per- 
fectly movable  fingers  on  each  hand,  and  six  toes, 
not  quite  so  well  formed,  on  each  foot.  No  cause 
could  be  assigned  for  the  appearance  of  this  unusual 
variety  of  the  human  species. 

Two  circumstances  are  well  worthy  of  remark  in 
both  these  cases.  In  each,  the  variety  appears  to 
have  arisen,  in  full  force,  and,  as  it  were,  per  saltum  ; 
a  wide  and  definite  difference  appearing,  at  once, 
between  the  Ancon  ram  and  the  ordinary  sheep ; 
between  the  six-fingered  and  six-toed  Gratio  Kelleia 
and  ordinary  men.  In  neither  case  is  it  possible 


36  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

to  point  out  any  obvious  reason  for  the  appearance 
of  the  variety.  Doubtless  there  were  determining 
causes  for  these  as  for  all  other  phenomena ;  but 
they  do  not  appear,  and  we  can  be  tolerably  certain 
that  what  are  ordinarily  understood  as  changes  in 
physical  conditions,  as  in  climate,  in  food,  or  the 
like,  did  not  take  place  and  had  nothing  to  do  with 
the  matter.  It  was  no  case  of  what  is  commonly 
called  adaptation  to  circumstances  ;  but,  to  use  a 
conveniently  erroneous  phrase,  the  variations  arose 
spontaneously.  The  fruitless  search  after  final 
causes  leads  their  pursuers  a  long  way  ;  but  even 
those  hardy  teleologists,  who  are  ready  to  break 
through  all  the  laws  of  physics  in  chase  of  their 
favourite  will-o'-the-wisp,  may  be  puzzled  to  dis- 
cover what  purpose  could  be  attained  by  the  stunted 
legs  of  Seth  Wright's  ram  or  the  hexadactyle 
members  of  Gratio  Kelleia. 

Varieties  then  arise  we  know  not  why  ;  and  it  is 
more  than  probable  that  the  majority  of  varieties 
have  arisen  in  this  "  spontaneous  "  manner,  though 
we  are,  of  course,  far  from  denying  that  they  may 
be  traced,  in  some  cases,  to  distinct  external  in- 
fluences ;  which  are  assuredly  competent  to  alter 
the  character  of  the  tegumentary  covering,  to 
change  colour,  to  increase  or  diminish  the  size  of 
muscles,  to  modify  constitution,  and,  among  plants, 
to  give  rise  to  the  metamorphosis  of  stamens  into 
petals,  and  so  forth.  But  however  they  may  have 
arisen,  what  especially  interests  us  at  present  is,  to 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  37 

remark  that,  once  in  existence,  many  varieties  obey 
the  fundamental  law  of  reproduction  that  like  tends 
to  produce  like;  and  their  offspring  exemplify  it  by 
tending  to  exhibit  the  same  deviation  from  the 
parental  stock  as  themselves.  Indeed,  there  seems 
to  be,  in  many  instances,  a  prepotent  influence 
about  a  newly-arisen  variety  which  gives  it  what 
one  may  call  an  unfair  advantage  over  the  normal 
descendants  from  the  same  stock.  This  is  strik- 
ingly exemplified  by  the  case  of  Gratio  Kelleia, 
who  married  a  woman  with  the  ordinary  penta- 
dactyle  extremities,  and  had  by  her  four  children, 
Salvator,  George,  Andre",  and  Marie.  Of  these 
children  Salvator,  the  eldest  boy,  had  six  fingers 
and  six  toes,  like  his  father ;  the  second  and  third, 
also  boys,  had  five  fingers  and  five  toes,  like  their 
mother,  though  the  hands  and  feet  of  George 
were  slightly  deformed.  The  last,  a  girl,  had  five 
fingers  and  five  toes,  but  the  thumbs  were  slightly 
deformed.  The  variety  thus  reproduced  itself 
purely  in  the  eldest,  while  the  normal  type 
reproduced  itself  purely  in  the  third,  and  almost 
purely  in  the  second  and  last :  so  that  it  would 
seem,  at  first,  as  if  the  normal  type  were  more 
powerful  than  the  variety.  But  all  these  children 
grew  up  and  intermarried  with  normal  wives  and 
husband,  and  then,  note  what  took  place  :  Salvator 
had  four  children,  three  of  whom  exhibited  the 
hexadactyle  members  of  their  grandfather  and 
father,  while  the  youngest  had  the  pentadactyle 


38  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

limbs  of  the  mother  and  grandmother;  so  that 
here,  notwithstanding  a  double  pentadactyle 
dilution  of  the  blood,  the  hexadactyle  variety  had 
the  best  of  it.  The  same  pre-potency  of  the 
variety  was  still  more  markedly  exemplified  in  the 
progeny  of  two  of  the  other  children,  Marie  and 
George.  Marie  (whose  thumbs  only  were  de- 
formed) gave  birth  to  a  boy  with  six  toes,  and 
three  other  normally  formed  children ;  but  George, 
who  was  not  quite  so  pure  a  pentadactyle,  begot, 
first,  two  girls,  each  of  whom  had  six  fingers  and 
toes  ;  then  a  girl  with  six  fingers  on  each  hand  and 
six  toes  on  the  right  foot,  but  only  five  toes  on 
the  left ;  and  lastly,  a  boy  with  only  five  fingers 
and  toes.  In  these  instances,  therefore,  the 
variety,  as  it  were,  leaped  over  one  generation  to 
reproduce  itself  in  full  force  in  the  next.  Finally, 
the  purely  pentadactyle  Andre  was  the  father  of 
many  children,  not  one  of  whom  departed  from 
the  normal  parental  type. 

If  a  variation  which  approaches  the  nature  of  a 
monstrosity  can  strive  thus  forcibly  to  reproduce 
itself,  it  is  not  wonderful  that  less  aberrant 
modifications  should  tend  to  be  preserved  even 
more  strongly  ;  and  the  history  of  the  Ancon  sheep 
is,  in  this  respect,  particularly  instructive.  With 
the  "  'cuteness  "  characteristic  of  their  nation,  the 
neighbours  of  the  Massachusetts  farmer  imagined 
it  would  be  an  excellent  thing  if  all  his  sheep 
were  imbued  with  the  stay-at-home  tendencies 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  39 

enforced  by  Nature  upon  the  newly-arrived  ram ; 
and  they  advised  Wright  to  kill  the  old  patriarch 
of  his  fold,  and  install  the  Ancon  ram  in  his  place. 
The  result  justified  their  sagacious  anticipations, 
and  coincided  very  nearly  with  what  occurred  to 
the  progeny  of  Gratio  Kelleia.  The  young  lambs 
were  almost  always  either  pure  Ancons,  or  pure 
ordinary  sheep.1  But  when  sufficient  Ancon 
sheep  were  obtained  to  interbreed  with  one 
another,  it  was  found  that  the  offspring  was 
always  pure  Ancon.  Colonel  Humphreys,  in  fact, 
states  that  he  was  acquainted  with  only  "  one 
questionable  case  of  a  contrary  nature."  Here, 
then,  is  a  remarkable  and  well-established 
instance,  not  only  of  a  very  distinct  race  being 
established  per  salhim,  but  of  that  race  breeding 
"  true "  at  once,  and  showing  no  mixed  forms, 
even  when  crossed  with  another  breed. 

By  taking  care  to  select  Ancons  of  both  sexes, 
for  breeding  from,  it  thus  became  easy  to  establish 
an  extremely  well-marked  race ;  so  peculiar  that, 

1  Colonel  Humphreys'  statements  are  exceedingly  explicit  on 
this  point : — "  When  an  Ancon  ewe  is  impregnated  by  a  com- 
mon ram,  the  increase  resembles  wholly  either  the  ewe  or  the 
ram.  The  increase  of  the  common  ewe  impregnated  by  an 
Ancon  ram  follows  entirely  the  one  or  the  other,  without 
blending  any  of  the  distinguishing  and  essential  peculiarities 
of  both.  Frequent  instances  have  happened  where  common 
ewes  have  had  twins  by  Ancon  rams,  when  one  exhibited  the 
complete  marks  and  features  of  the  ewe,  the  other  of  the  ram. 
The  contrast  has  been  rendered  singularly  striking,  when  one 
short-legged  and  one  long-legged  lamb,  produced  at  a  birth, 
have  been  seen  sucking  the  dam  at  the  same  time." — Philoso- 
phical Transactions,  1813,  Pt.  J.  pp.  89,  90. 
32 


40  THE   ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  n 

even  when  herded  with  other  sheep,  it  was  noted 
that  the  Ancons  kept  together.  And  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  existence  of  this 
breed  might  have  been  indefinitely  protracted  ; 
but  the  introduction  of  the  Merino  sheep,  which 
were  not  only  very  superior  to  the  Ancons  in  wool 
and  meat,  but  quite  as  quiet  and  orderly,  led  to 
the  complete  neglect  of  the  new  breed,  so  that,  in 
1813,  Colonel  Humphreys  found  it  difficult  to 
obtain  the  specimen,  the  skeleton  of  which  was 
presented  to  Sir  Joseph  Banks.  We  believe  that, 
for  many  years,  no  remnant  of  it  has  existed  in 
the  United  States. 

Gratio  Kelleia  was  not  the  progenitor  of  a  race 
of  six-fingered  men,  as  Seth  Wright's  ram  became 
a  nation  of  Ancon  sheep,  though  the  tendency  of 
the  variety  to  perpetuate  itself  appears  to  have 
been  fully  as  strong  in  the  one  case  as  in  the 
other.  And  the  reason  of  the  difference  is  not 
far  to  seek.  Seth  Wright  took  care  not  to  weaken 
the  Ancon  blood  by  matching  his  Ancon  ewes 
with  any  but  males  of  the  same  variety,  while 
Gratio  Kelleia's  sons  were  too  far  removed  from 
the  patriarchal  times  to  intermarry  with  their 
sisters  ;  and  his  grand -children  seem  not  to  have 
been  attracted  by  their  six-fingered  cousins.  In 
other  words,  in  the  one  example  a  race  was  pro- 
duced, because,  for  several  generations,  care  was 
taken  to  select  both  parents  of  the  breeding  stock 
from  animals  exhibiting  a  tendency  to  vary  in  the 


n  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  41 

same  direction  ;  while,  in  the  other,  no  race  was 
evolved,  because  no  such  selection  was  exercised. 
A  race  is  a  propagated  variety  ;  and  as,  by  the  laws 
of  reproduction,  offspring  tend  to  assume  the 
parental  forms,  they  will  be  more  likely  to  pro- 
pagate a  variation  exhibited  by  both  parents  than 
that  possessed  by  only  one. 

There  is  no  organ  of  the  body  of  an  animal 
which  may  not,  and  does  not,  occasionally,  vary 
more  or  less  from  the  normal  type  ;  and  there  is  no 
variation  which  may  not  be  transmitted  and  which, 
if  selectively  transmitted,  may  not  become  the 
foundation  of  a  race.  This  great  truth,  sometimes 
forgotten  by  philosophers,  has  long  been  familiar 
to  practical  agriculturists  and  breeders  ;  and  upon 
it  rest  all  the  methods  of  improving  the  breeds  of 
domestic  animals,  which,  for  the  last  century,  have 
been  followed  with  so  much  success  in  England. 
Colour,  form,  size,  texture  of  hair  or  wool,  pro- 
portions of  various  parts,  strength  or  weakness  of 
constitution,  tendency  to  fatten  or  to  remain  lean, 
to  give  much  or  little  milk,  speed,  strength,  tem- 
per, intelligence,  special  instincts ;  there  is  not  one 
of  these  characters  the  transmission  of  which  is  not 
an  every-day  occurrence  within  the  experience  of 
cattle-breeders,  stock-farmers,  horse-dealers,  and 
dog  and  poultry  fanciers.  Nay,  it  is  only  the  other 
day  that  an  eminent  physiologist,  Dr.  Brown- 
Sequard,  communicated  to  the  Royal  Society  his 
discovery  that  epilepsy,  artificially  produced  in 


42  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

guinea-pigs,  by  a  means  which  he  has  discovered, 
is  transmitted  to  their  offspring.1 

But  a  race,  once  produced,  is  no  more  a  fixed 
and  immutable  entity  than  the  stock  whence  it 
sprang  ;  variations  arise  among  its  members,  and 
as  these  variations  are  transmitted  like  any  others, 
new  races  may  be  developed  out  of  the  pre-exist- 
ing one  ad  infinitum,  or,  at  least,  within  any  limit 
at  present  determined.  Given  sufficient  time  and 
sufficiently  careful  selection,  and  the  multitude  of 
races  which  may  arise  from  a  common  stock  is  as 
astonishing  as  are  the  extreme  structural  differ- 
ences which  they  may  present.  A  remarkable 
example  of  this  is  to  be  found  in  the  rock-pigeon, 
which  Mr.  Darwin  has,  in  our  opinion,  satisfactorily 
demonstrated  to  be  the  progenitor  of  all  our 
domestic  pigeons,  of  which  there  are  certainly 
more  than  a  hundred  well-marked  races.  The 
most  noteworthy  of  these  races  are,  the  four  great 
stocks  known  to  the  "  fancy  "  as  tumblers,  pouters, 
carriers,  and  fantails ;  birds  which  not  only  differ 
most  singularly  in  size,  colour,  and  habits,  but  in  the 
form  of  the  beak  and  of  the  skull :  in  the  pro- 
portions of  the  beak  to  the  skull ;  in  the  number 
of  tail-feathers  ;  in  the  absolute  and  relative  size  of 
the  feet ;  in  the  presence  or  absence  of  the  uropygial 
gland  ;  in  the  number  of  vertebrae  in  the  back  ; 
in  short,  in  precisely  those  characters  in  which 

1  [Compare  Weismann's  Essays  Upon  Heredity,  p.  310,  et  scq. 
1893.] 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  43 

the  genera  and  species  of  birds  differ  from  one 
another. 

And  it  is  most  remarkable  and  instructive  to 
observe,  that  none  of  these  races  can  be  shown  to 
have  been  originated  by  the  action  of  changes  in 
what  are  commonly  called  external  circumstances, 
upon  the  wild  rock-pigeon.  On  the  contrary, 
from  time  immemorial  pigeon -fanciers  have  had 
essentially  similar  methods  of  treating  their  pets, 
which  have  been  housed,  fed,  protected  and  cared 
for  in  much  the  same  way  in  all  pigeonries.  In 
fact,  there  is  no  case  better  adapted  than  that  of 
the  pigeons  to  refute  the  doctrine  which  one  sees 
put  forth  on  high  authority,  that  "  no  other 
characters  than  those  founded  on  the  development 
of  bone  for  the  attachment  of  muscles"  are 
capable  of  variation.  In  precise  contradiction  of 
this  hasty  assertion,  Mr.  Darwin's  researches 
prove  that  the  skeleton  of  the  wings  in  domestic 
pigeons  has  hardly  varied  at  all  from  that  of  the 
wild  type  ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  in  exactly 
those  respects,  such  as  the  relative  length  of  the 
beak  and  skull,  the  number  of  the  vertebrae,  and 
the  number  of  the  tail-feathers,  in  which  muscular 
exertion  can  have  no  important  influence,  that 
the  utmost  amount  of  variation  has  taken  place. 

We  have  said  that  the  following  out  of  the 
properties  exhibited  by  physiological  species  would 
lead  us  into  difficulties,  and  at  this  point  they  begin 


44  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  n 

to  be  obvious  ;  for  if,  as  the  result  of  spontaneous 
variation  and  of  selective  breeding,  the  progeny  of 
a  common  stock  may  become  separated  into  groups 
distinguished  from  one  another  by  constant,  not 
sexual,  morphological  characters,  it  is  clear  that 
the  physiological  definition  of  species  is  likely  to 
clash  with  the  morphological  definition.  No  one 
would  hesitate  to  describe  the  pouter  and  the 
tumbler  as  distinct  species,  if  they  were  found  fossil, 
or  if  their  skins  and  skeletons  were  imported,  as 
those  of  exotic  wild  birds  commonly  are — -and  with- 
out doubt,  if  considered  alone,  they  are  good  and 
distinct  morphological  species.  On  the  other  hand, 
they  are  not  physiological  species,  for  they  are 
descended  from  a  common  stock,  the  rock-pigeon. 

Under  these  circumstances,  as  it  is  admitted  on 
all  sides  that  races  occur  in  Nature,  how  are  we  to 
know  whether  any  apparently  distinct  animals  are 
really  of  different  physiological  species,  or  not, 
seeing  that  the  amount  of  morphological  difference 
is  no  safe  guide  ?  Is  there  any  test  of  a  physio- 
logical species  ?  The  usual  answer  of  physiologists 
is  in  the  affirmative.  It  is  said  that  such  a  test  is 
to  be  found  in  the  phsenomena  of  hybridisation — 
in  the  results  of  crossing  races,  as  compared  with 
the  results  of  crossing  species. 

So  far  as  the  evidence  goes  at  present,  in- 
dividuals, of  what  are  certainly  known  to  be  mere 
races  produced  by  selection,  however  distinct  they 
may  appear  to  be,  not  only  breed  freely  together, 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  45 

but  the  offspring  of  such  crossed  races  are  perfectly 
fertile  with  one  another.  Thus,  the  spaniel  and 
the  greyhound,  the  dray-horse  and  the  Arab,  the 
pouter  and  the  tumbler,  breed  together  with  perfect 
freedom,  and  their  mongrels,  if  matched  with  other 
mongrels  of  the  same  kind,  are  equally  fertile. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  individuals  of  many  natural  species  are  either 
absolutely  infertile  if  crossed  with  individuals  of 
other  species,  or,  if  they  give  rise  to  hybrid 
offspring,  the  hybrids  so  produced  are  infertile 
when  paired  together.  The  horse  and  the  ass, 
for  instance,  if  so  crossed,  give  rise  to  the  mule, 
arid  there  is  no  certain  evidence  of  offspring  ever 
having  been  produced  by  a  male  and  female 
mule.  The  unions  of  the  rock-pigeon  and  the 
ring-pigeon  appear  to  be  equally  barren  of  result. 
Here,  then,  says  the  physiologist,  we  have  a  means 
of  distinguishing  any  two  true  species  from  any 
two  varieties.  If  a  male  and  a  female,  selected 
from  each  group,  produce  offspring,  and  that  off- 
spring is  fertile  with  others  produced  in  the  same 
way,  the  groups  are  races  and  not  species.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  no  result  ensues,  or  if  the  offspring 
are  infertile  with  others  produced  in  the  same 
way,  they  are  true  physiological  species.  The 
test  would  be  an  admirable  one.  if,  in  the  first 
place,  it  were  always  practicable  to  apply  it,  and 
if,  in  the  second,  it  always  yielded  results  suscep- 
tible of  a  definite  interpretation.  Unfortunately, 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES 


in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  this  touchstone  for 
species  is  wholly  inapplicable. 

The  constitution  of  many  wild  animals  is  so 
altered  by  confinement  that  they  will  not  breed 
even  with  their  own  females,  so  that  the  negative 
results  obtained  from  crosses  are  of  no  value ;  and 
the  antipathy  of  wild  animals  of  different  species 
for  one  another,  or  even  of  wild  and  tame  members 
of  the  same  species,  is  ordinarily  so  great,  that  it 
is  hopeless  to  look  for  such  unions  in  Nature. 
The  hermaphrodism  of  most  plants,  the  difficulty 
in  the  way  of  insuring  the  absence  of  their  own 
or  the  proper  working  of  other  pollen,  are  obsta- 
cles of  no  less  magnitude  in  applying  the  test  to 
them.  And,  in  both  animals  and  plants,  is  super- 
added  the  further  difficulty,  that  experiments 
must  be  continued  over  a  long  time  for  the  purpose 
of  ascertaining  the  fertility  of  the  mongrel  or 
hybrid  progeny,  as  well  as  of  the  first  crosses  from 
which  they  spring. 

Not  only  do  these  great  practical  difficulties  lie 
in  the  way  of  applying  the  hybridisation  test,  but 
even  wlien  this  oracle  can  be  questioned,  its  replies 
are  sometimes  as  doubtful  as  those  of  Delphi. 
For  example,  cases  are  cited  by  Mr.  Darwin,  of 
plants  which  are  more  fertile  with  the  pollen  of 
another  species  than  with  their  own ;  and  there 
are  others,  such  as  certain  Fuci^the  male  element 
of  which  will  fertilise  the  ovule  of  a  plant  of 
distinct  species,  while  the  males  of  the  latter 

. 


n  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  47 

species  are  ineffective  with  the  females  of  the 
first.  So  that,  in  the  last-named  instance,  a 
physi6logist,  who  should  cross  the  two  species  in 
one  way,  would  decide  that  they  were  true  species; 
while  another,  who  should  cross  them  in  the 
reverse  way,  would,  with  equal  justice,  according 
to  the  rule,  pronounce  them  to  be  mere  races. 
Several  plants,  which  there  is  great  reason  to 
believe  are  mere  varieties,  are  almost  sterile  when 
crossed ;  while  both  animals  and  plants,  which 
have  always  been  regarded  by  naturalists  as  of 
distinct  species,  turn  out,  when  the  test  is  applied, 
to  be  perfectly  fertile.  Again,  the  sterility  or 
fertility  of  crosses  seems  to  bear  no  relation  to  the 
structural  resemblances  or  differences  of  the 
members  of  any  two  groups. 

Mr.  Darwin  has  discussed  this  question  with 
singular  ability  and  circumspection,  and  his  con- 
clusions are  summed  up  as  follows,  at  page  276  of 
his  work : — 

"  First  crosses  between  forms  sufficiently  distinct  to  be  ranked 
as  species,  and  their  hybrids,  are  very  generally,  b\it  not 
universally,  sterile.  The  sterility  is  of  all  degrees,  and  is  often 
so  slight  that  the  two  most  careful  experimentalists  who  have 
ever  lived  have  come  to  diametrically  opposite  conclusions  in 
ranking  forms  by  this  test.  The  sterility  is  innately  variable 
in  individuals  of  the  same  species,  and  is  eminently  susceptible 
of  favourable  and  unfavourable  conditions.  The  degree  of 
sterility  does  not  strictly  follow  systematic  affinity,  but  is 
governed  by  several  curious  and  complex  laws.  It  is  generally 
different  and  sometimes  widely  different,  in  reciprocal  crosses 


48  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  n 

between  the  same  two  species.  It  is  not  always  equal  in  degree 
in  a  first  cross,  and  in  the  hybrid  produced  from  this  cross. 

"  In  the  same  manner  as  in  grafting  trees,  the  capacity  of 
one  species  or  variety  to  take  on  another  is  incidental  on 
generally  unknown  differences  in  their  vegetative  systems  ;  so 
in  crossing,  the  greater  or  less  facility  of  one  species  to  unite 
with  another  is  incidental  on  unknown  differences  in  their 
reproductive  systems.  There  is  no  more  reason  to  think  that 
species  have  been  specially  endowed  with  various  degrees  of 
sterility  to  prevent  them  crossing  and  breeding  in  Nature,  than 
to  think  that  trees  have  been  specially  endowed  with  various 
and  somewhat  analogous  degrees  of  difficulty  in  being  grafted 
together,  in  order  to  prevent  them  becoming  inarched  in  our 
forests. 

"The  sterility  of  first  crosses  between  pure  species,  which 
have  their  reproductive  systems  perfect,  seems  to  depend  on 
several  circumstances  ;  in  some  cases  largely  on  the  early  death  of 
the  embryo.  The  sterility  of  hybrids  which  have  their  repro- 
ductive systems  imperfect,  and  which  have  had  this  system 
and  their  whole  organisation  disturbed  by  being  compounded 
of  two  distinct  species,  seems  closely  allied  to  that  sterility 
which  so  frequently  affects  pure  species  when  their  natural  con- 
ditions of  life  have  been  disturbed.  This  view  is  supported  by 
a  parallelism  of  another  kind  :  namely,  that  the  crossing  of 
forms,  only  slightly  different,  is  favourable  to  the  vigour  and 
fertility  of  the  offspring  ;  and  that  slight  changes  in  the  con- 
ditions of  life  are  apparently  favourable  to  the  vigour  and 
fertility  of  all  organic  beings.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the 
degree  of  difficulty  in  uniting  two  species,  and  the  degree  of 
sterility  of  their  hybrid  offspring,  should  generally  correspond, 
though  due  to  distinct  causes  ;  for  both  depend  on  the  amount 
of  difference  of  some  kind  between  the  species  which  are  crossed. 
Nor  is  it  surprising  that  the  facility  of  effecting  a  first  cross, 
the  fertility  of  hybrids  produced  from  it,  and  the  capacity  of 
being  grafted  together — though  this  latter  capacity  evidently 
depends  on  widely  different  circumstances — should  all  run  to  a 
certain  extent  parallel  with  the  systematic  affinity  of  the  forms 
which  are  subjected  to  experiment ;  for  systematic  affinity 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  49 

attempts   to    express  all    kinds    of   resemblance    between  all 


"First  crosses  between  forms  known  to  be  varieties,  or 
sufficiently  alike  to  be  considered  as  varieties,  and  their  mon- 
grel offspring,  are  very  generally,  but  not  quite  universally, 
fertile.  Nor  is  this  nearly  general  and  perfect  fertility  sur- 
prising, when  we  remember  how  liable  we  are  to  argue  in  a 
circle  with  respect  to  varieties  in  a  state  of  Nature  ;  and  when 
we  remember  that  the  greater  number  of  varieties  have  been 
produced  under  domestication  by  the  selection  of  mere  external 
differences,  and  not  of  differences  in  the  reproductive  system. 
In  all  other  respects,  excluding  fertility,  there  is  a  close  general 
resemblance  between  hybrids  and  mongrels." — Pp.  276 — 8. 

We  fully  agree  with  the  general  tenor  of  this 
weighty  passage ;  but  forcible  as  are  these  argu- 
ments, and  little  as  the  value  of  fertility  or 
infertility  as  a  test  of  species  may  be,  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  the  really  important  fact,  so  far 
as  the  inquiry  into  the  origin  of  species  goes,  is, 
that  there  are  such  things  in  Nature  as  groups  of 
animals  and  of  plants,  the  members  of  which  are  in-^ 
capable  of  fertile  union  with  those  of  other  groups  ; 
and  that  there  are  such  things  as  hybrids,  which 
are  absolutely  sterile  when  crossed  with  other 
hybrids.  For,  if  such  phenomena  as  these  were 
exhibited  by  only  two  of  those  assemblages  of 
living  objects,  to  which  the  name  of  species 
(whether  it  be  used  in  its  physiological  or  in  its 
morphological  sense)  is  given,  it  would  have  to  be 
accounted  for  by  any  theory  of  the  origin  of 
species,  and  every  theory  which  could  not  account 
for  it  would  be,  so  far,  imperfect. 


50  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

Up  to  this  point,  we  have  been  dealing  with 
matters  of  fact,  and  the  statements  which  we 
have  laid  before  the  reader  would,  to  the  best  of 
our  knowledge,  be  admitted  to  contain  a  fair 
exposition  of  what  is  at  present  known  respecting 
the  essential  properties  of  species,  by  all  who 
have  studied  the  question.  And  whatever  may 
be  his  theoretical  views,  no  naturalist  will  prob- 
ably be  disposed  to  demur  to  the  following 
summary  of  that  exposition  : — 

Living  beings,  whether '  animals  or  plants,  are 
divisible  into  multitudes  of  distinctly  definable 
kinds,  which  are  morphological  species.  They  are 
also  divisible  into  groups  of  individuals,  which 
breed  freely  together,  tending  to  reproduce  their 
like,  and  are  physiological  species.  Normally 
resembling  their  parents,  the  offspring  of  members 
of  these  species  are  still  liable  to  vary ;  and  the 
variation  may  be  perpetuated  by  selection,  as  a 
race,  which  race,  in  many  cases,  presents  all  the 
characteristics  of  a  morphological  species.  But 
it  is  not  as  yet  proved  that  a  race  ever  exhibits, 
when  crossed  with  another  race  of  the  same 
species,  those  phenomena  of  hybridisation  which 
are  exhibited  by  many  species  when  crossed  with 
other  species.  On  the  other  hand,  not  only  is  it 
not  proved  that  all  species  give  rise  to  hybrids 
infertile  inter  se,  but  there  is  much  reason  to 
believe  that,  in  crossing,  species  exhibit  every 
gradation  from  perfect  sterility  to  perfect  fertility. 


n  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  51 

Such  are  the  most  essential  characteristics  of 
species.  Even  were  man  not  one  of  them — a 
member  of  the  same  system  and  subject  to  the 
same  laws — the  question  of  their  origin,  their 
causal  connexion,  that  is,  with  the  other  pheno- 
mena of  the  universe,  must  have  attracted  his 
attention,  as  soon  as  his  intelligence  had  raised 
itself  above  the  level  of  his  daily  wants. 

Indeed  history  relates  that  such  was  the  case, 
and  has  embalmed  for  us  the  speculations  upon 
the  origin  of  living  beings,  which  were  among  the 
earliest  products  of  the  dawning  intellectual  activity 
of  man.  In  those  early  days  positive  knowledge 
was  not  to  be  had,  but  the  craving  after  it  needed, 
at  all  hazards,  to  be  satisfied,  and  according  to  the 
country,  or  the  turn  of  thought,  of  the  speculator, 
the  suggestion  that  all  living  things  arose  from  the 
mud  of  the  Nile,  from  a  primeval  egg,  or  from  some 
more  anthropomorphic  agency,  afforded  a  sufficient 
resting-place  for  his  curiosity.  The  myths  of 
Paganism  are  as  dead  as  Osiris  or  Zeus,  and  the 
man  who  should  revive  them,  in  opposition  to  the 
knowledge  of  our  time,  would  be  justly  laughed  to 
scorn  ;  but  the  coeval  imaginations  current  among 
the  rude  inhabitants  of  Palestine,  recorded  by 
writers  whose  very  name  and  age  are  admitted  by 
every  scholar  to  be  unknown,  have  unfortunately 
not  yet  shared  their  fate,  but,  even  at  this  day,  are 
regarded  by  nine-tenths  of  the  civilised  world  as 
the  authoritative  standard  of  fact  and  the  criterion 


52  THE  OKIGIN  OF  SPECIES  n 

of  the  justice  of  scientific  conclusions,  in  all  that 
relates  to  the  origin  of  things,  and,  among  them, 
of  species.  In  this  nineteenth  century,  as  at  the 
dawn  of  modern  physical  science,  the  cosmogony 
of  the  semi-barbarous  Hebrew  is  the  incubus  of 
the  philosopher  and  the  opprobrium  of  the  ortho- 
dox. Who  shall  number  the  patient  and  earnest 
seekers  after  truth,  from  the  days  of  Galileo  until 
now,  whose  lives  have  been  embittered  and  their 
good  name  blasted  by  the  mistaken  zeal  of  Biblio- 
laters ?  Who  shall  count  the  host  of  weaker  men 
whose  sense  of  truth  has  been  destroyed  in  the  effort 
to  harmonise  impossibilities — whose  life  has  been 
wasted  in  the  attempt  to  force  the  generous  new 
wine  of  Science  into  the  old  bottles  of  Judaism,  com- 
pelled by  the  outcry  of  the  same  strong  party  ? 

It  is  true  that  if  philosophers  have  suffered,  their 
cause  has  been  amply  avenged.  Extinguished 
theologians  lie  about  the  cradle  of  every  science  as 
the  strangled  snakes  beside  that  of  Hercules  ;  and 
history  records  that  whenever  science  and  ortho- 
doxy have  been  fairly  opposed,  the  latter  has  been 
forced  to  retire  from  the  lists,  bleeding  and  crushed 
if  not  annihilated ;  scotched,  if  not  slain.  But 
orthodoxy  is  the  Bourbon  of  the  world  of  thought. 
It  learns  not,  neither  can  it  forget ;  and  though, 
at  present,  bewildered  and  afraid  to  move,  it  is  as 
willing  as  ever  to  insist  that  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  contains  the  beginning  and  the  end  of 
sound  science;  and  to  visit,  with  such  petty 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  53 

thunderbolts  as  its  half-paralysed  hands  can  hurl, 
those  who  refuse  to  degrade  Nature  to  the  level  of 
primitive  Judaism. 

Philosophers,  on  the  other  hand,  have  no  such 
aggressive  tendencies.  With  eyes  fixed  on  the 
noble  goal  to  which  "per  aspera  et  ardua"  they 
tend,  they  may,  now  and  then,  be  stirred  to 
momentary  wrath  by  the  unnecessary  obstacles 
with  which  the  ignorant,  or  the  malicious,  encum- 
ber, if  they  cannot  bar,  the  difficult  path  ;  but  why 
should  their  souls  be  deeply  vexed  ?  The  majesty 
of  Fact  is  on  their  side,  and  the  elemental  forces 
of  Nature  are  working  for  them.  Not  a  star  comes 
to  the  meridian  at  its  calculated  time  but  testifies 
to  the  justice  of  their  methods — their  beliefs  are 
"  one  with  the  falling  rain  and  with  the  growing 
corn."  By  doubt  they  are  established,  and  open 
inquiry  is  their  bosom  friend.  Such  men  have  no 
fear  of  traditions  however  venerable,  and  no  respect 
for  them  when  they  become  mischievous  and 
obstructive ;  but  they  have  better  than  mere  anti- 
quarian business  in  hand,  and  if  dogmas,  which 
ought  to  be  fossil  but  are  not,  are  not  forced  upon 
their  notice,  they  are  too  happy  to  treat  them  as 
non-existent. 

The  hypotheses  respecting  the  origin  of  species 
which  profess  to  stand  upon  a  scientific  basis,  and, 
as  such,  alone  demand  serious  attention,  are  of  two 
kinds.  The  one,  the  "  special  creation  "  hypothesis, 


54  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  n 

presumes  every  species  to  have  originated  from  one 
or  more  stocks,  these  not  being  the  result  of  the 
modification  of  any  other  form  of  living  matter — or 
arising  by  natural  agencies — but  being  produced, 
as  such,  by  a  supernatural  creative  act. 

The  other,  the  so-called  "  transmutation " 
hypothesis,  considers  that  all  existing  species  are 
the  result  of  the  modification  of  pre-existing 
species,  and  t  hose  of  their  predecessors,  by  agencies 
similar  to  those  which  at  the  present  day  produce 
varieties  and  races,  and  therefore  in  an  altogether 
natural  way ;  and  it  is  a  probable,  though  not  a 
necessary  consequence  of  this  hypothesis,  that  all 
living  beings  have  arisen  from  a  single  stock. 
With  respect  to  the  origin  of  this  primitive  stock, 
or  stocks,  the  doctrine  of  the  origin  of  species  is 
obviously  not  necessarily  concerned.  The  trans- 
mutation hypothesis,  for  example,  is  perfectly 
consistent  either  with  the  conception  of  a  special 
creation  of  the  primitive  germ,  or  with  the 
supposition  of  its  having  arisen,  as  a  modification 
of  inorganic  matter,  by  natural  causes. 

The  doctrine  of  special  creation  owes  its  exist- 
ence very  largely  to  the  supposed  necessity  of 
making  science  accord  with  the  Hebrew  cos- 
mogony ;  but  it  is  curious  to  observe  that,  as  the 
doctrine  is  at  present  maintained  by  men  of 
science,  it  is  as  hopelessly  inconsistent  with  the 
Hebrew  view  as  any  other  hypothesis. 

If  there  be  any  result  which  has  come  more 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  55 

clearly  out  of  geological  investigation  than  another, 
it  is,  that  the  vast  series  of  extinct  animals  and 
plants  is  not  divisible,  as  it  was  once  supposed  to 
be,  into  distinct  groups,  separated  by  sharply- 
marked  boundaries.  There  are  no  great  gulfs 
between  epochs  and  formations — no  successive 
periods  marked  by  the  appearance  of  plants,  of 
water  animals,  and  of  land  animals,  en  masse. 
Every  year  adds  to  the  list  of  links  between 
what  the  older  geologists  supposed  to  be  widely 
separated  epochs  :  witness  the  crags  linking  the 
drift  with  older  tertiaries ;  the  Maestricht  beds 
linking  the  tertiaries  with  the  chalk;  the  St. 
Cassian  beds  exhibiting  an  abundant  fauna  of 
mixed  mesozoic  and  palaeozoic  types,  in  rocks  of  an 
epoch  once  supposed  to  be  eminently  poor  in  life ; 
witness,  lastly,  the  incessant  disputes  as  to  whether 
a  given  stratum  shall  be  reckoned  devonian  or 
carboniferous,  silurian  or  devonian,  cambrian  or 
silurian. 

This  truth  is  further  illustrated  in  a  most 
interesting  manner  by  the  impartial  and  highly 
competent  testimony  of  M.  Pictet,  from  whose 
calculations  of  what  percentage  of  the  genera  of 
animals,  existing  in  any  formation,  lived  during 
the  preceding  formation,  it  results  that  in  no  case 
is  the  proportion  less  than  one-third,  or  33  per 
cent.  It  is  the  triassic  formation,  or  the  com- 
mencement of  the  mesozoic  epoch,  which  has 
received  the  smallest  inheritance  from  preceding 

33 


56  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

ages.  The  other  formations  not  uncommonly 
exhibit  60,  80,  or  even  94  per  cent,  of  genera  in 
common  with  those  whose  remains  are  imbedded 
in  their  predecessor.  Not  only  is  this  true,  biit 
the  subdivisions  of  each  formation  exhibit  new 
species  characteristic  of,  and  found  only  in,  them  ; 
and,  in  many  cases,  as  in  the  lias  for  example,  the 
separate  beds  of  these  subdivisions  are  distin- 
guished by  well-marked  and  peculiar  forms  of  life. 
A  section,  a  hundred  feet  thick,  will  exhibit,  at 
different  heights,  a  dozen  species  of  ammonite, 
none  of  which  passes  beyond  its  particular  zone 
of  limestone,  or  clay,  into  the  zone  below  it  or  into 
that  above  it ;  so  that  those  who  adopt  the  doc- 
trine of  special  creation  must  be  prepared  to  admit, 
that  at  intervals  of  time,  corresponding  with  the 
thickness  of  these  beds,  the  Creator  thought  fit 
to  interfere  with  the  natural  course  of  events  for 
the  purpose  of  making  a  new  ammonite.  It  is 
not  easy  to  transplant  oneself  into  the  frame  of 
mind  of  those  who  can  accept  such  a  conclusion 
as  this,  on  any  evidence  short  of  absolute  demon- 
stration ;  and  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  is  to  be 
gained  by  so  doing,  since,  as  we  have  said,  it  is 
obvious  that  such  a  view  of  the  origin  of  living 
beings  is  utterly  opposed  to  the  Hebrew  cos- 
mogony. Deserving  no  aid  from  the  powerful 
arm  of  Bibliolatry,  then,  does  the  received  form  of 
the  hypothesis  of  special  creation  derive  any 
support  from  science  or  sound  logic  ?  Assuredly 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  57 

not  much.  The  arguments  brought  forward  in  its 
favour  all  take  one  form  :  If  species  were  not 
supernaturally  created,  we  cannot  understand  the 
facts  x,  or  y,  or  z ;  we  cannot  understand  the 
structure  of  animals  or  plants,  unless  we  suppose 
they  were  contrived  for  special  ends ;  we  cannot 
understand  the  structure  of  the  eye,  except  by 
supposing  it  to  have  been  made  to  see  with ;  we 
cannot  understand  instincts,  unless  we  suppose 
animals  to  have  been  miraculously  endowed  with 
them. 

As  a  question  of  dialectics,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  this  sort  of  reasoning  is  not  very  formidable 
to  those  who  are  not  to  be  frightened  by  conse- 
quences. It  is  an  argumentum  ad  ignorantiam — 
take  this  explanation  or  be  ignorant.  But  suppose 
we  prefer  to  admit  our  ignorance  rather  than 
adopt  a  hypothesis  at  variance  with  all  the  teach- 
ings of  Nature  ?  Or,  suppose  for  a  moment  we 
admit  the  explanation,  and  then  seriously  ask 
ourselves  how  much  the  wiser  are  we  ;  what  does 
the  explanation  explain  ?  Is  it  any  more  than  a 
grandiloquent  way  of  announcing  the  fact,  that  we 
really  know  nothing  about  the  matter?  A 
phenomenon  is  explained  when  it  is  shown  to  be 
a  case  of  some  general  law  of  Nature ;  but  the 
supernatural  interposition  of  the  Creator  can,  by 
the  nature  of  the  case,  exemplify  no  law,  and  if 
species  have  really  arisen  in  this  way,  it  is  absurd 
to  attempt  to  discuss  their  origin. 


58  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

Or,  lastly,  let  us  ask  ourselves  whether  any 
amount  of  evidence  which  the  nature  of  our 
faculties  permits  us  to  attain,  can  justify  us  in 
asserting  that  any  phgenomenon  is  out  of  the  reach 
of  natural  causation.  To  this  end  it  is  obviously 
necessary  that  we  should  know  all  the  con- 
sequences to  which  all  possible  combinations, 
continued  through  unlimited  time,  can  give  rise. 
If  we  knew  these,  and  found  none  competent  to 
originate  species,  we  should  have  good  ground  for 
denying  their  origin  by  natural  causation.  Till 
we  know  them,  any  hypothesis  is  better  than  one 
which  involves  us  in  such  miserable  presumption. 

But  the  hypothesis  of  special  creation  is  not 
only  a  mere  specious  mask  for  our  ignorance  ;  its 
existence  in  Biology  marks  the  youth  and  imper- 
fection of  the  science.  For  what  is  the  history  of 
every  science  but  the  history  of  the  elimination 
of  the  notion  of  creative,  or  other  interferences, 
with  the  natural  order  of  the  phsenomena  which 
are  the  subject-matter  of  that  science  ?  When 
Astronomy  was  young  "  the  morning  stars  sang 
together  for  joy,"  and  the  planets  were  guided 
in  their  courses  by  celestial  hands.  Now,  the 
harmony  of  the  stars  has  resolved  itself  into 
gravitation  according  to  the  inverse  squares  of  the 
distances,  and  the  orbits  of  the  planets  are  dedu- 
cible  from  the  laws  of  the  forces  which  allow  a 
schoolboy's  stone  to  break  a  window.  The  light- 
ning was  the  angel  of  the  Lord  ;  but  it  has  pleased 


IT  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  59 

Providence,  in  these  modern  times,  .that  science 
should  make  it  the  humble  messenger  of  man,  and 
we  know  that  every  flash  that  shimmers  about 
the  horizon  on  a  summer's  evening  is  determined 
by  ascertainable  conditions,  and  that  its  direction 
and  brightness  might,  if  our  knowledge  of  these 
were  great  enough,  have  been  calculated. 

The  solvency  of  great  mercantile  companies 
rests  on  the  validity  of  the  laws  which  have  been 
ascertained  to  govern  the  seeming  irregularity  of 
that  human  life  which  the  moralist  bewails  as  the 
most  uncertain  of  things  ;  plague,  pestilence,  and 
famine  are  admitted,  by  all  but  fools,  to  be  the 
natural  result  of  causes  for  the  most  part  fully 
within  human  control,  and  not  the  unavoidable 
tortures  inflicted  by  wrathful  Omnipotence  upon 
His  helpless  handiwork. 

Harmonious  order  governing  eternally  continu- 
ous progress — the  web  and  woof  of  matter  and 
force  interweaving  by  slow  degrees,  without  a 
broken  thread,  that  veil  which  lies  between  us 
and  the  Infinite — that  universe  which  alone  we 
know  or  can  know ;  such  is  the  picture  which 
science  draws  of  the  world,  and  in  proportion  as 
any  part  of  that  picture  is  in  unison  with  the  rest, 
so  may  we  feel  sure  that  it  is  rightly  painted. 
Shall  Biology  alone  remain  out  of  harmony  with 
her  sister  sciences  ? 

Such  arguments  against  the  hypothesis  of  the 
direct  creation  of  species  as  these  are  plainly 


60  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  n 

enough  deducible  from  general  considerations ;  but 
there  are,  in  addition,  phenomena  exhibited  by 
species  themselves,  and  yet  not  so  much  a  part  of 
their  very  essence  as  to  have  required  earlier 
mention,  which  are  in  the  highest  degree  per- 
plexing, if  we  adopt  the  popularly  accepted 
hypothesis.  Such  are  the  facts  of  distribution  in 
space  and  in  time ;  the  singular  phenomena 
brought  to  light  by  the  study  of  development ; 
the  structural  relations  of  species  upon  which  our 
systems  of  classification  are  founded  ;  the  great 
doctrines  of  philosophical  anatomy,  such  as 
that  of  homology^  or  of  the  community  of 
^  tfL  \  u4.structural  plan  exhibited  by  large  groups  of 


species  differing  very  widely  in  their  habits  and 
functions. 

The  species  of  animals  which  inhabit  the  sea  on 
opposite  sides  of  the  isthmus  of  Panama  are 
wholly  distinct ;  *  the  animals  and  plants  which 
inhabit  islands  are  commonly  distinct  from  those 
of  the  neighbouring  mainlands,  and  yet  have  a 
similarity  of  aspect.  The  mammals  of  the  latest 
tertiary  epoch  in  the  Old  and  New  Worlds  belong 
to  the  same  genera,  or  family  groups,  as  those 
which  now  inhabit  the  same  great  geographical 
area.  The  crocodilian  reptiles  which  existed  in  the 
earliest  secondary  epoch  were  similar  in  general 
structure  to  those  now  living,  but  exhibit  slight 

1  Recent  investigations  tend  to  show  that  this  statement  is 
not  strictly  accurate. — 1870. 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  61 

differences  in  their  vertebrae,  nasal  passages,  and 
one  or  two  other  points.  The  guinea-pig  has 
teeth  which  are  shed  before  it  is  born,  and  hence 
can  never  subserve  the  masticatory  purpose  for 
which  they  seem  contrived,  and,  in  like  manner, 
the  female  dugong  has  tusks  which  never  cut  the 
gum.  All  the  members  of  the  same  great  group 
run  through  similar  conditions  in  their  develop- 
ment, and  all  their  parts,  in  the  adult  state,  are 
arranged  according  to  the  same  plan.  Man  is 
more  like  a  gorilla  than  a  gorilla  is  like  a  lemur. 
Such  are  a  few,  taken  at  random,  among  the 
multitudes  of  similar  facts  which  modern  research 
has  established  ;  but  when  the  student  seeks  for 
an  explanation  of  them  from  the  supporters  of 
the  received  hypothesis  of  the  origin  of  species, 
the  reply  he  receives  is,  in  substance,  of  Oriental 
simplicity  and  brevity — "  Mashallah  !  it  so  pleases 
God  ! "  There  are  different  species  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  isthmus  of  Panama,  because  they  were 
created  different  on  the  two  sides.  The  pliocene 
mammals  are  like  the  existing  ones,  because  such 
was  the  plan  of  creation  ;  and  we  find  rudimental 
organs  and  similarity  of  plan,  because  it  has 
pleased  the  Creator  to  set  before  Himself  a 
"  divine  exemplar  or  archetype,"  and  to  copy  it  in 
His  works ;  and  somewhat  ill,  those  who  hold  this 
view  imply,  in  some  of  them.  That  such  verbal 
hocus-pocus  should  be  received  as  science  will  one 
day  be  regarded  as  evidence  of  the  low  state  of 


THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES 


intelligence  in  the  nineteenth  century,  just  as 
we  amuse  ourselves  with  the  phraseology  about 
Nature's  abhorrence  of  a  vacuum,  wherewith 
Torricelli^s  compatriots  were  satisfied  to  explain 
the  rise  of  water  in  a  pump.  And  be  it  recol- 
lected that  this  sort  of  satisfaction  works  not  only 
negative  but  positive  ill,  by  discouraging  inquiry, 
and  so  depriving  man  of  the  usufruct  of  one  of  the 
J\  most  fertile  fields  of  his  great  patrimony,  Nature. 
The  objections  to  the  doctrine  of  the  origin  of 
species  by  special  creation  which  have  been 

J  detailed,  must  have  occurred,  with  more  or  less 

force,  to  the  mind  of  every  one  who  has  seriously 
and  independently  considered  the  subject.  It  is 
therefore  no  wonder  that,  from  time  to  time,  this 
hypothesis  should  have  been  met  by  counter 
hypotheses,  all  as  well,  and  some  better  founded 
than  itself ;  and  it  is  curious  to  remark  that  the 
inventors  of  the  opposing  views  seem  to  have  been 
led  into  them  as  much  by  their  knowledge  of 
geology,  as  by  their  acquaintance  with  biology. 
In  fact,  when  the  mind  has  once  admitted  the 
conception  of  the  gradual  production  of  the  present 
physical  state  of  our  globe,  by  natural  causes 
operating  through  long  ages  of  time,  it  will  be 
little  disposed  to  allow  that  living  beings  have 
made  their  appearance  in  another  way,  and  the 
speculations  of  De  Maillet  and  his  successors  are 
the  natural  complement  of  Scilla's  demonstration 
of  the  true  nature  of  fossils. 


n  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  63 

A  contemporary  of  Newton  and  of  Leibnitz, 
sharing  therefore"  in  the  intellectual  activity  of  the 
remarkable  age  which  witnessed  the  birth  of 
modern  physical  science,  Benoit  de  Maillet  spent 
a  long  life  as  a  consular  agent  of  the  French  Gov- 
ernment in  various  Mediterranean  ports.  For 
sixteen  years,  in  fact,  he  held  the  office  of  Consul- 
General  in  Egypt,  and  the  wonderful  phenomena 
offered  by  the  valley  of  the  Nile  appear  to  have 
strongly  impressed  his  mind,  to  have  directed  his 
attention  to  all  facts  of  a  similar  order  which  came 
within  his  observation,  and  to  have  led  him  to 
speculate  on  the  origin  of  the  present  condition  of 
our  globe  and  of  its  inhabitants.  But,  with  all 
his  ardour  for  science,  De  Maillet  seems  to  have 
hesitated  to  publish  views  which,  notwithstanding 
the  ingenious  attempts  to  reconcile  them  with  the 
Hebrew  hypothesis  contained  in  the  preface  to 
"Telliamed,"  were  hardly  likely  to  be  received 
with  favour  by  his  contemporaries. 

But  a  short  time  had  elapsed  since  more  than 
one  of  the  great  anatomists  and  physicists  of  the 
Italian  school  had  paid  dearly  for  their  endeavours 
to  dissipate  some  of  the  prevalent  errors ;  and 
their  illustrious  pupil,  Harvey,  the  founder  of 
modem  physiology,  had  not  fared  so  well,  in  a 
country  less  oppressed  by  the  benumbing  in- 
fluences of  theology,  as  to  tempt  any  man  to  follow 
his  example.  Probably  not  uninfluenced  by  these 
considerations,  his  Catholic  majesty's  Consul- 


64  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  n 

General  for  Egypt  kept  his  theories  to  himself 
throughout  a  long  life,  for  "  Telliamed,"  the  only 
scientific  work  which  is  known  to  have  proceeded 
from  his  pen,  was  not  printed  till  1735,  when  its 
author  had  reached  the  ripe  age  of  seventy-nine  ; 
and  though  De  Maillet  lived  three  years  longer, 
his  book  was  not  given  to  the  world  before  1748. 
Even  then  it  was  anonymous  to  those  who  were 
not  in  the  secret  of  the  anagrammatic  character 
of  its  title ;  and  the  preface  and  dedication  are  so 
worded  as,  in  case  of  necessity,  to  give  the  printer 
a  fair  chance  of  falling  back  on  the  excuse  that 
the  work  was  intended  for  a  mere  jeu  d 'esprit. 

The  speculations  of  the  suppositions  Indian 
sage,  though  quite  as  sound  as  those  of  many  a 
"  Mosaic  Geology,"  which  sells  exceedingly  well, 
have  no  great  value  if  we  consider  them  by  the 
light  of  modern  science.  The  waters  are  supposed 
to  have  originally  covered  the  whole  globe ;  to 
have  deposited  the  rocky  masses  which  compose 
its  mountains  by  processes  comparable  to  those 
which  are  now  forming  mud,  sand,  and  shingle  ; 
and  then  to  have  gradually  lowered  their  level, 
leaving  the  spoils  of  their  animal  and  vegetable 
inhabitants  embedded  in  the  strata.  As  the  dry 
land  appeared,  certain  of  the  aquatic  animals  are 
supposed  to  have  taken  to  it,  and  to  have  become 
gradually  adapted  to  terrestrial  and  aerial  modes 
of  existence.  But  if  we  regard  the  general  tenor 
and  style  of  the  reasoning  in  relation  to  the  state 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  65 

of  knowledge  of  the  day,  two  circumstances 
appear  very  well  worthy  of  remark.  The  first, 
that  De  Maillet  had  a  notion  of  the  modifiability 
of  living  forms  (though  without  any  precise 
information  on  the  subject),  and  how  such  modi- 
fiability might  account  for  the  origin  of  species  ; 
the  second,  that  he  very  clearly  apprehended  the 
great  modern  geological  doctrine,  so  strongly 
insisted  upon  by  Hutton,  and  so  ably  and 
comprehensively  expounded  by  Lyell,  that  we 
must  look  to  existing  causes  for  the  explanation 
of  past  geological  events.  Indeed,  the  following 
passage  of  the  preface,  in  which  De  Maillet  is 
supposed  to  speak  of  the  Indian  philosopher 
Telliamed,  his  alter  ego,  might  have  been  written 
by  the  most  philosophical  uniformitarian  of  the 
present  day : — 

' '  Ce  qu'il  y  a  d'etonnant,  est  que  pour  aniver  a  ces  connois- 
sances  il  semble  avoir  pervert!  1'ordre  naturel,  puisqu'au  lieu  de 
s'attacher  d'abord  a  rechercher  1'origine  de  notre  globe  il  a 
commence  par  travailler  a  s'instruire  de  la  nature.  Mais  a 
1'entendre,  ce  renversement  de  1'ordre  a  etc  pour  lui  1'effet  d'un 
genie  favorable  qui  1'a  conduit  pas  a  pas  et  comme  par  la  main 
aux  decouvertes  les  plus  sublimes.  CTest  en  decomposant  la 
substance  de  ce  globe  par  une  anatomic  exacte  de  toutes  ses 
parties  qu'il  a  premierement  appris  de  quelles  matieres  il  etait 
compose  et  quels  arrangemens  ces  memes  matieres  observaieri^ 
entre  elles.  Ces  lumieres  jointes  a  1'esprit  de  comparaison 
toujours  necessaire  a  quiconque  entreprend  de  percer  les  voiles 
dont  la  nature  aime  a  se  cacher,  ont  servi  de  guide  a  notre 
philosophe  pour  parvenir  a  des  connoissances  plus  interessantes. 
Par  la  matiere  et  1'arrangement  de  ces  compositions  il  pretend 


66  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  n 

avoir  reconnu  quelle  est  la  veritable  origine  de  ce  globe  que  nous 
habitons,  comment  et  par  qui  il  a  ete  forme." — Pp.  xix.  xx. 

But  De  Maillet  was  before  his  age,  and  as  could 
hardly  fail  to  happen  to  one  who  speculated  on  a 
zoological  and  botanical  question  before  Linnaeus, 
and  on  a  physiological  problem  before  Haller,  he 
fell  into  great  errors  here  and  there  ;  and  hence, 
perhaps,  the  general  neglect  of  his  work.  Robinet's 
speculations  are  rather  behind,  than  in  advance 
of,  those  of  De  Maillet ;  and  though  Linnaeus 
may  have  played  with  the  hypothesis  of  trans- 
mutation, it  obtained  no  serious  support  until 
Lamarck  adopted  it,  and  advocated  it  with  great 
ability  in  his  "  Philosophic  Zoologique." 

Impelled  towards  the  hypothesis  of  the 
transmutation  of  species,  partly  by  his  general 
cosmological  and  geological  views ;  partly  by  the 
conception  of  a  graduated,  though  irregularly 
branching,  scale  of  being,  which  had  arisen  out  of 
his  profound  study  of  plants  and  of  the  lower 
forms  of  animal  life,  Lamarck,  whose  general  line 
of  thought  often  closely  resembles  that  of  De 
Maillet,  made  a  great  advance  upon  the  crude 
and  merely  speculative  manner  in  which  that  writer 
deals  with  the  question  of  the  origin  of  living 
beings,  by  endeavouring  to  find  physical  causes 
competent  to  effect  that  change  of  one  species 
into  another,  which  De  Maillet  had  only  supposed 
to  occur.  And  Lamarck  conceived  that  he  had 
found  in  Nature  such  causes,  amply  sufficient  for 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  67 

the  purpose  in  view.  It  is  a  physiological  fact, 
he  says,  that  organs  are  increased  in  size  by 
action,  atrophied  by  inaction ;  it  is  another 
physiological  fact  that  modifications  produced  are 
transmissible  to  offspring.  Change  the  actions  of 
an  animal,  therefore,  and  you  will  change  its 
structure,  by  increasing  the  development  of  the 
parts  newly  brought  into  use  and  by  the  diminu- 
tion of  those  less  used;  but  by  altering  the 
circumstances  which  surround  it  you  will  alter  its 
actions,  and  hence,  in  the  long  run,  change  of 
circumstance  must  produce  change  of  organisation. 
All  the  species  of  animals,  therefore,  are,  in 
Lamarck's  view,  the  result  of  the  indirect  action 
of  changes  of  circumstance,  upon  those  primitive 
germs  which  he  considered  to  have  originally 
arisen,  by  spontaneous  generation,  within  the 
waters  of  the  globe.  It  is  curious,  however,  that 
Lamarck  should  insist  so  strongly x  as  he  has  done, 
that  circumstances  never  in  any  degree  directly 
modify  the  form  or  the  organisation  of  animals, 
but  only  operate  by  changing  their  wants  and 
consequently  their  actions ;  Tor  he  thereby  brings 
upon  himself  the  obvious  question,  How,  then,  do 
plants,  which  cannot  be  said  to  have  wants  or 
actions,  become  modified  ?  To  this  he  replies, 
that  they  are  modified  by  the  changes  in  their 
nutritive  processes,  which  are  effected  by  changing 
circumstances ;  and  it  does  not  seem  to  have 

1  See  Phil.  Zoologiquc,  vol.  i.  p.  222,  et  seq. 


8 


THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES 


occurred  to  him  that  such  changes  might  be  as 
well  supposed  to  take  place  among  animals. 

When  we  have  said  that  Lamarck  felt  that 
mere  speculation  was  not  the  way  to  arrive  at  the 
origin  of  species,  but  that  it  was  necessary,  in 
order  to  the  establishment  of  any  sound  theory 
on  the  subject,  to  discover  by  observation  or 
otherwise,  some  vcra  causa,  competent  to  give  rise 
to  them  ;  that  he  affirmed  the  true  order  of 
classification  to  coincide  with  the  order  of  their 
development  one  from  another;  that  he  insisted 
on  the  necessity  of  allowing  sufficient  time,  very 
strongly  ;  and  that  all  the  varieties  of  instinct  and 
reason  were  traced  back  by  him  to  the  same 
cause  as  that  which  has  given  rise  to  species,  we 
have  enumerated  his  chief  contributions  to  the 
advance  of  the  question.  On  the  other  hand, 
from  his  ignorance  of  any  power  in  Nature 
competent  to  modify  the  structure  of  animals, 
except  the  development  of  parts,  or  atrophy  of 
them,  in  consequence  of  a  change  of  needs, 
Lamarck  was  led  to  attach  infinitely  greater 
weight  than  it  deserves  to  this  agency,  and  the 
absurdities  into  which  he  was  led  have  met  with 
deserved  condemnation.  Of  the  struggle  for 
existence,  on  which,  as  we  shall  see,  Mr.  Darwin 
lays  such  great  stress,  he  had  no  conception  ; 
indeed,  he  doubts  whether  there  really  are  such 
things  as  extinct  species,  unless  they  be  such  large 
animals  as  may  have  met  their  death  at  the 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  69 

hands  of  man ;  and  so  little  does  he  dream  of 
there  being  any  other  destructive  causes  at  work, 
that,  in  discussing  the  possible  existence  of  fossil 
shells,  he  asks,  "  Pourquoi  d'ailleurs  seroient-ils 
perdues  des  que  1'homme  n'a  pu  operer  leur 
destruction  ?"("  Phil.  Zool.,"  vol.  i.  p.  77.)  Of 
the  influence  of  selection  Lamarck  has  as  little 
notion,  and  he  makes  no  use  of  the  wonderful 
phenomena  which  are  exhibited  by  domesticated 
animals,  and  illustrate  its  powers.  The  vast 
influence  of  Cuvier  was  employed  against  the 
Lamarckian  views,  and,  as  the  untenability  of 
some  of  his  conclusions  was  easily  shown,  his 
doctrines  sank  under  the  opprobrium  of  scientific, 
as  well  as  of  theological,  heterodoxy.  Nor  have 
the  efforts  made  of  late  years  to  revive  them 
tended  to  re-establish  their  credit  in  the  minds  of 
sound  thinkers  acquainted  with  the  facts  of  the 
case ;  indeed  it  may  be  doubted  whether  Lamarck 
has  not  suffered  more  from  his  friends  than  from 
his  foes. 

Two  years  ago,  in  fact,  though  we  venture  to 
question  if  even  the  strongest  supporters  of  the 
special  creation  hypothesis  had  not,  now  and  then, 
an  uneasy  consciousness  that  all  was  not  right, 
their  position  seemed  more  impregnable  than  ever, 
if  not  by  its  own  inherent  strength,  at  any  rate  by 
the  obvious  failure  of  all  the  attempts  which  had 
been  made  to  carry  it.  On  the  other  hand,  how- 
ever much  the  few,  who  thought  deeply  on  the 


70  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  n 

question  of  species,  might  be  repelled  by  the 
generally  received  dogmas,  they  saw  no  way  of 
escaping  from  them  save  by  the  adoption  of 
suppositions  so  little  justified  by  experiment 
or  by  observation  as  to  be  at  least  equally  dis- 
tasteful. 

The  choice  lay  between  two  absurdities  and  a 
middle  condition  of  uneasy  scepticism ;  which 
last,  however  unpleasant  and  unsatisfactory,  was 
obviously  the  only  justifiable  state  of  mind 
under  the  circumstances. 

Such  being  the  general  ferment  in  the  minds  of 
naturalists,  it  is  no  wonder  that  they  mustered 
strong  in  the  rooms  of  the  Linnaean  Society,  on 
the  1st  of  July  of  the  year  1858,  to  hear  two 
papers  by  authors  living  on  opposite  sides  of  the 
globe,  working  out  their  results  independently, 
and  yet  professing  to  have  discovered  one  and  the 
same  solution  of  all  the  problems  connected  with 
species.  The  one  of  these  authors  was  an  able 
naturalist,  Mr.  Wallace,  who  had  been  employed 
for  some  years  in  studying  the  productions  of  the 
islands  of  the  Indian  Archipelago,  and  who  had 
forwarded  a  memoir  embodying  his  views  to  Mr. 
Darwin,for  communication  to  the  Linnaan  Society. 
On  perusing  the  essay,  Mr.  Darwin  was  not  a  little 
surprised  to  find  that  it  embodied  some  of  the 
leading  ideas  of  a  great  work  which  he  had  been 
preparing  for  twenty  years,  and  parts  of  which, 
containing  a  development  of  the  very  same  views, 


II  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  71 

had  been  perused  by  his  private  friends  fifteen  or 
sixteen  years  before.  Perplexed  in  what  manner 
to  do  full  justice  both  to  his  friend  and  to  himself, 
Mr.  Darwin  placed  the  matter  in  the  hands  of 
Dr.  Hooker  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  by  whose  advice 
he  communicated  a  brief  abstract  of  his  own  views 
to  the  Lirmaean  Society,  at  the  same  time  that 
Mr.  Wallace's  paper  was  read.  Of  that  abstract, 
the  work  on  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  is  an  enlarge- 
ment ;  but  a  complete  statement  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
doctrine  is  looked  for  in  the  large  and  well- 
illustrated  work  which  he  is  said  to  be  preparing 
for  publication. 

The  Darwinian  hypothesis  has  the  merit  of 
being  eminently  simple  and  comprehensible  in 
principle,  and  its  essential  positions  may  be  stated 
in  a  very  few  words  :  all  species  have  been  pro- 
duced by  the  development  of  varieties  from 
common  stocks  ;  by  the  conversion  of  these,  first 
into  permanent  races  and  then  into  new  species, 
by  the  process  of  natural  selection,  which  process 
is  essentially  identical  with  that  artificial  selection 
by  which  man  has  originated  the  races  of  domestic 
animals — the  struggle  for  existence  taking  the 
place  of  man,  and  exerting,  in  the  case  of  natural 
selection,  that  selective  action  which  he  performs 
in  artificial  selection.  \ 

The  evidence  brought  forward  by  Mr.  Darwin  in 
support  of  his  hypothesis  is  of  three  kinds.  First, 

34 


72  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  II 

he  endeavours  to  prove  that  species  may  be 
.  originated  by  selection  ;  secondly,  he  attempts  to 
show  that  natural  causes  are  competent  to  exert 
.  selection  ;  and  thirdly,  he  tries  to  prove  that  the 
most  remarkable  and  apparently  anomalous 
phenomena  exhibited  by  the  distribution, 
development,  and  mutual  relations  of  species, 
can  be  shown  to  be  deducible  from  the  general 
doctrine  of  their  origin,  which  he  propounds, 
combined  with  the  known  facts  of  geological 
change ;  and  that,  even  if  all  these  phenomena 
are  not  at  present  explicable  by  it,  none  are 
necessarily  inconsistent  with  it. 

There  cannot  be  a  doubt  that  the  method  of 
inquiry  which  Mr.  Darwin  has  adopted  is  not  only 
rigorously  in  accordance  with  the  canons  of 
scientific  logic,  but  that  it  is  the  only  adequate 
method.  Critics  exclusively  trained  in  classics  or 
in  mathematics,  who  have  never  determined  a 
scientific  fact  in  their  lives  by  induction  from 
experiment  or  observation,  prate  learnedly  about 
Mr.  Darwin's  method,  which  is  not  inductive 
enough,  not  Baconian  enough,  forsooth,  for  them. 
But  even  if  practical  acquaintance  with  the  process 
of  scientific  investigation  is  denied  them,  they  may 
learn,  by  the  perusal  of  Mr.  Mill's  admirable 
chapter  "  On  the  Deductive  Method,"  that  there 
are  multitudes  of  scientific  inquiries  in  which  the 
method  of  pure  induction  helps  the  investigator 
but  a  very  little  way. 


n  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  73 

"The  mode  of  investigation,"  says  Mr.  Mill,  "which,  from 
the  proved  inapplicability  of  direct  methods  of  observation  and 
experiment,  remains  to  us  as  the  main  source  of  the  knowledge 
we  possess,  or  can  acquire,  respecting  the  conditions  and  laws  of 
recurrence  of  the  more  complex  phenomena,  is  called,  in  its 
most  general  expression,  the  deductive  method,  and  consists  of 
three  operations  :  the  first,  one  of  direct  induction  ;  the  second, 
of  ratiocination  ;  and  the  third,  of  verification." 

Now,  the  conditions  which  have  determined  the 
existence  of  species  are  not  only  exceedingly  com- 
plex, but,  so  far  as  the  great  majority  of  them  are 
concerned,  are  necessarily  beyond  our  cognisance. 
But  what  Mr.  Darwin  has  attempted  to  do  is  in 
exact  accordance  with  the  rule  laid  down  by  Mr. 
Mill ;  he  has  endeavoured  to  determine  certain 
great  facts  inductively,  by  observation  and  experi- 
ment ;  he  has  then  reasoned  from  the  data  thus 
furnished  ;  and  lastly,  he  has  tested  the  validity  of 
his  ratiocination  by  comparing  his  deductions  with 
the  observed  facts  of  Nature.  Inductively,  Mr. 
Darwin  endeavours  to  prove  that  species  arise  in 
a  given  way.  Deductively,  he  desires  to  show 
that,  if  they  arise  in  that  way,  the  facts  of  distri- 
bution, development,  classification,  &c.,  may  be 
accounted  for,  i.e.  may  be  deduced  from  their  mode 
of  origin,  combined  with  admitted  changes  in 
physical  geography  and  climate,  during  an  inde- 
finite period.  And  this  explanation,  or  coinci- 
dence of  observed  with  deduced  facts,  is,  so  far  as 
it  extends,  a  verification  of  the  Darwinian  view. 

There  is  no  fault  to  be  found  with  Mr.  Darwin's 


74  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  n 

method,  then  ;  but  it  is  another  question  whether 
he  has  fulfilled  all  the  conditions  imposed  by  that 
method.  Is  it  satisfactorily  proved,  in  fact,  that 
species  may  be  originated  by  selection  ?  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  natural  selection  ?  that  none 
of  the  phenomena  exhibited  by  species  are  incon- 
sistent with  the  origin  of  species  in  this  way  ?  If 
these  questions  can  be  answered  in  the  affirmative, 
Mr.  Darwin's  view  steps  out  of  the  rank  of  hypo- 
theses into  those  of  proved  theories ;  but,  so  long 
as  the  evidence  at  present  adduced  falls  short  of 
enforcing  that  affirmation,  so  long,  to  our  minds, 
must  the  new  doctrine  be  content  to  remain  among 
the  former — an  extremely  valuable,  and  in  the 
highest  degree  probable,  doctrine,  indeed  the  only 
extant  hypothesis  which  is  worth  anything  in  a 
scientific  point  of  view ;  but  still  a  hypothesis,  and 
not  yet  the  theory  of  species. 

After  much  consideration,  and  with  assuredly 
no  bias  against  Mr.  Darwin's  views,  it  is  our  clear 
conviction  that,  as  the  evidence  stands,  it  is  not 
absolutely  proven  that  a  group  of  animals,  having 
all  the  characters  exhibited  by  species  in  Nature, 
has  ever  been  originated  by  selection,  whether 
artificial  or  natural.  Groups  having  the  morpho- 
logical character  of  species — distinct  and  permanent 
races  in  fact — have  been  so  produced  over  and  over 
again  ;  but  there  is  no  positive  evidence,  at  present, 
that  any  group  of  animals  has,  by  variation  and 
selective  breeding,  given  rise  to  another  group 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  75 

which  was,  even  in  the  least  degree,  infertile  with 
the  first.  Mr.  Darwin  is  perfectly  aware  of  this 
weak  point,  and  brings  forward  a  multitude  of 
ingenious  and  important  arguments  to  diminish 
the  force  of  the  objection.  We  admit  the  value  of 
these  arguments  to  their  fullest  extent ;  nay,  we 
will  go  so  far  as  to  express  our  belief  that  experi- 
ments, conducted  by  a  skilful  physiologist,  would  very 
probably  obtain  the  desired  production  of  mutually 
more  or  less  infertile  breeds  from  a  common  stock, 
in  a  comparatively  few  years  ;  but  still,  as  the  case 
stands  at  present,  this  "  little  rift  within  the  lute  " 
is  not  to  be  disguised  nor  overlooked. 

In  the  remainder  of  Mr.  Darwin's  argument  our 
own  private  ingenuity  has  not  hitherto  enabled  us 
to  pick  holes  of  any  great  importance  ;  and  judging 
by  what  we  hear  and  read,  other  adventurers  in 
the  same  field  do  not  seem  to  have  been  much 
more  fortunate.  It  has  been  urged,  for  instance, 
that  in  his  chapters  on  the  struggle  for  existence 
and  on  natural  selection,  Mr.  Darwin  does  not  so 
much  prove  that  natural  selection  does  occur,  as 
that  it  must  occur  ;  but,  in  fact,  no  other  sort  of 
demonstration  is  attainable.  A  race  does  not 
attract  our  attention  in  Nature  until  it  has,  in  all 
probability,  existed  for  a  considerable  time,  and 
then  it  is  too  late  to  inquire  into  the  conditions  of 
its  origin.  Again,  it  is  said  that  there  is  no  real 
analogy  between  the  selection  which  takes  place 
under  domestication,  by  human  influence,  and  any 


76  THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  II 

operation  which  can  be  effected  by  Nature,  for  man 
interferes  intelligently.  Reduced  to  its  elements, 
this  argument  implies  that  an  effect  produced  with 
trouble  by  an  intelligent  agent  must,  a  fortiori,  be 
more  troublesome,  if  not  impossible,  to  an  unin- 
telligent agent.  Even  putting  aside  the  question 
whether  Nature,  acting  as  she  does  according  to 
definite  and  invariable  laws,  can  be  rightly  called 
an  unintelligent  agent,  such  a  position  as  this  is 
wholly  untenable.  Mix  salt  and  sand,  and  it  shall 
puzzle  the  wisest  of  men,  with  his  mere  natural 
appliances,  to  separate  all  the  grains  of  sand  from 
all  the  grains  of  salt ;  but  a  shower  of  rain  will 
effect  the  same  object  in  ten  minutes.  And  so, 
while  man  may  find  it  tax  all  his  intelligence  to 
separate  any  variety  which  arises,  and  to  breed 
selectively  from  it,  the  destructive  agencies  inces- 
santly at  work  in  Nature,  if  they  find  one  variety 
to  be  more  soluble  in  circumstances  than  the  other, 
will  inevitably,  in  the  long  run,  eliminate  it. 

A  frequent  and  a  just  objection  to  the  Lamarckian 
hypothesis  of  the  transmutation  of  species  is  based 
upon  the  absence  of  transitional  forms  between 
many  species.  But  against  the  Darwinian  hypo- 
thesis this  argument  has  no  force.  Indeed,  one  of 
the  most  valuable  and  suggestive  parts  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  work  is  that  in  which  he  proves,  that 
the  frequent  absence  of  transitions  is  a  necessary 
consequence  of  his  doctrine,  and  that  the  stock 
whence  two  or  more  species  have  sprung,  need  in 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  77 

no  respect  be  intermediate  between  these  species. 
If  any  two  species  have  arisen  from  a  common 
stock  in  the  same  way  as  the  carrier  and  the 
pouter,  say,  have  arisen  from  the  rock-pigeon, 
then  the  common  stock  of  these  two  species  need 
be  no  more  intermediate  between  the  two  than 
the  rock-pigeon  is  between  the  carrier  and 
pouter.  Clearly  appreciate  the  force  of  this 
analogy,  and  all  the  arguments  against  the  origin 
of  species  by  selection,  based  on  the  absence  of 
transitional  forms,  fall  to  the  ground.  And  Mr. 
Darwin's  position  might,  we  think,  have  been 
even  stronger  than  it  is  if  he  had  not  embarrassed 
himself  with  the  aphorism,  "  Natura  non  facit 
saltum,"  which  turns  up  so  often  in  his  pages. 
We  believe,  as  we  have  said  above,  that  Nature 
does  make  jumps  now  and  then,  and  a  recognition 
of  the  fact  is  of  no  small  importance  in  disposing 
of  many  minor  objections  to  the  doctrine  of  trans- 
mutation. 

But  we  must  pause.  The  discussion  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  arguments  in  detail  would  lead  us  far 
beyond  the  limits  within  which  we  proposed,  at 
starting,  to  confine  this  article.  Our  object  has 
been  attained  if  we  have  given  an  intelligible, 
however  brief,  account  of  the  established  facts 
connected  with  species,  and  of  the  relation  of  the 
explanation  of  those  facts  offered  by  Mr.  Darwin  to 
the  theoretical  views  held  by  his  predecessors  and 
his  contemporaries,  and,  above  all,  to  the  require- 


78  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  n 

'  ments  of  scientific  logic.  We  have  ventured  to 
point  out  that  it  does  not,  as  yet,  satisfy  all  those 
requirements ;  but  we  do  not  hesitate  to  assert 
that  it  is  as  superior  to  any  preceding  or  con- 
temporary hypothesis,  in  the  extent  of  observa- 
tional and  experimental  basis  on  which  it  rests,  in 
its  rigorously  scientific  method,  and  in  its  power  of 
explaining  biological  phenomena,  as  was  the 
hypothesis  of  Copernicus  to  the  speculations  of 
Ptolemy.  But  the  planetary  orbits  turned  out  to 
be  not  quite  circular  after  all,  and,  grand  as  was 
the  service  Copernicus  rendered  to  science,  Kepler 
and  Newton  had  to  come  after  him.  What  if  the 
orbit  of  Darwinism  should  be  a  little  too  circular  ? 
What  if  species  should  offer  residual  phenomena, 
here  and  there,  not  explicable  by  natural  selection  ? 
Twenty  years  hence  naturalists  may  be  in  a 
position  to  say  whether  this  is,  or  is  not,  the  case  ; 
but  in  either  event  they  will  owe  the  author  of 
"  The  Origin  of  Species "  an  immense  debt  of 
gratitude.  We  should  leave  a  very  wrong  im- 
pression on  the  reader's  mind  if  we  permitted  him 
to  suppose  that  the  value  of  that  work  depends 
wholly  on  the  ultimate  justification  of  the 
theoretical  views  which  it  contains.  On  the  con- 
trary, if  they  were  disproved  to-morrow,  the  book 
would  still  .be  the  best  of  its  kind — the  most 
compendious  statement  of  well-sifted  facts  bearing 
on  the  doctrine  of  species  that  has  ever  appeared. 
The  chapters  on  Variation,  on  the  Struggle  for 


II  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  79 

Existence,  on  Instinct,  on  Hybridism,  on  the  Imper- 
fection of  the  Geological  Record,  on  Geographical 
Distribution,  have  not  only  no  equals,  but,  so  far 
as  our  knowledge  goes,  no  competitors,  within  the 
range  of  biological  literature.  And  viewed  as  a 
whole,«we  do  not  believe  that,  since  the  publica- 
tion of  Von  Baer's  "  Researches  on  Development," 
thirty  years  ago,  any  work  has  appeared  calculated 
to  exert  so  large  an  influence,  not  only  on  the 
future  of  Biology,  but  in  extending  the  domination 
of  Science  over  regions  of  thought  into  which  she 
has,  as  yet  hardly  penetrated. 


Ill 

CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF 
SPECIES" 

[1864] 

1.  UEBEB    DIE    DARWIN'SCHE    SCHOPFTTNGSTHEORIE  ;    BIN 

VORTRAG,  VON  A.  KoLLiKER.     Leipzig,  1864. 

2.  EXAMINATION  DU  LIVRE  DE  M.  DARWIN  STIR  L'ORIGINE 

DBS  ESPECES.     Par  P.  FLOURENS.     Paris,  1864. 

IN  the  course  of  the  present  year  several  foreign 
commentaries  upon  Mr.  Darwin's  great  work  have 
made  their  appearance.  Those  who  have  perused 
that  remarkable  chapter  of  the  "  Antiquity  of 
Man,"  in  which  Sir  Charles  Lyell  draws  a  parallel 
between  the  development  of  species  and  that  of 
languages,  will  be  glad  to  hear  that  one  of  the 
most  eminent  philologers  of  Germany,  Professor 
Schleicher,  has,  independently,  published  a  most 
instructive  and  philosophical  pamphlet  (an  ex- 
cellent notice  of  which  is  to  be  found  in  the 


HI      CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     81 

Reader,  for  February  27th  of  this  year)  supporting 
similar  views  with  all  the  weight  of  his  special 
knowledge  and  established  authority  as  a  linguist. 
Professor  Haeckel,  to  whom  Schleicher  addresses 
himself,  previously  took  occasion,  in  his  splendid 
monograph  on  the  Radiolaria,1  to  express  his  high 
appreciation  of,  and  general  concordance  with,  Mr. 
Darwin's  views. 

But  the  most  elaborate  criticisms  of  the  "  Origin 
of  Species"  which  have  appeared  are  two  works  of 
very  widely  different  merit,  the  one  by  Professor 
Kolliker,  the  well-known  anatomist  and  histolo- 
gist  of  Wiirzburg ;  the  other  by  M.  Flourens, 
Perpetual  Secretary  of  the  French  Academy  of 
Sciences. 

Professor  Kolliker's  critical  essay  "  Upon  the 
Darwinian  Theory  "  is,  like  all  that  proceeds  from 
the  pen  of  that  thoughtful  and  accomplished 
writer,  worthy  of  the  most  careful  consideration. 
It  comprises  a  brief  but  clear  sketch  of  Darwin's 
views,  followed  by  an  enumeration  of  the  leading 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  their  acceptance ;  diffi- 
culties which  would  appear  to  be  insurmountable 
to  Professor  Kolliker,  inasmuch  as  he  proposes  to 
replace  Mr.  Darwin's  Theory  by  one  which  he 
terms  the  "  Theory  of  Heterogeneous  Generation." 
We  shall  proceed  to  consider  first  the  destructive, 
and  secondly,  the  constructive  portion  of  the 
essay. 

1  Die  Radiolarien :  eine  Monographic,  p.  231. 


82     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     m 

We  regret  to  find  ourselves  compelled  to  dissent 
very  widely  from  many  of  Professor  Kolliker's 
remarks;  and  from  none  more  thoroughly  than 
from  those  in  which  he  seeks  to  define  what 
we  may  term  the  philosophical  position  of  Dar- 
winism. 

"Darwin,"  says  Professor  Kolliker,  "is,  in  the  fullest  sense  of 
the  word,  a  Teleologist.  He  says  quite  distinctly  (First  Edition, 
pp.  199,  200)  that  every  particular  in  the  structure  of  an  animal 
has  been  created  for  its  benefit,  and  he  regards  the  whole  series 
of  animal  forms  only  from  this  point  of  view." 

And  again : 

"7.  The  teleologieal  general  conception  adopted  by  Darwin 
is  a  mistaken  one. 

"Varieties  arise  irrespectively  of  the  notion  of  purpose,  or 
of  utility,  according  to  general  laws  of  Nature,  and  may  be 
either  useful,  or  hurtful,  or  indifferent. 

"  The  assumption  that  an  organism  exists  only  on  account  of 
some  definite  end  in  view,  and  represents  something  more  than 
the  incorporation  of  a  general  idea,  or  law,  implies'a  one-sided 
conception  of  the  universe.  Assuredly,  every  organ  has,  and 
every  organism  fulfils,  its  end,  but  its  purpose  is  not  the  condition 
of  its  existence.  Every  organism  is  also  sufficiently  perfect  for 
the  purpose  it  serves,  and  in  that,  at  least,  it  is  useless  to  seek 
for  a  cause  of  its  improvement."- 

It  is  singular  how  differently  one  and  the  same 
book  will  impress  different  minds.  That  which 
struck  the  present  writer  most  forcibly  on  his  first 
perusal  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  was  the  con- 
viction that  Teleology,  as  commonly  understood, 
had  received  its  deathblow  at  Mr.  Darwin's  hands. 
For  the  teleologieal  argument  runs  thus  :  an  organ 


Ill     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     83 


or  organism  (A)  j»  pnaujpdy  fitted  to  perform  a 

'function  or  purpose  (B)  ;  therefore  it  was  specially 
constructed  to  perform,  that  function.  In  Paley's 
famous  illustration,  the  adaptation  of  all  the  parts 
of  the  watch  to  the  function,  or  purpose,  of  showing 
the  time,  is  held  to  be  evidence  that  the  watch 
was  specially  contrived  to  that  end  ;  on  the  ground, 
that  the  only  cause  we  know  of,  competent  to 
produce  such  an  effect  as  a  watch  which  shall  keep 
time,  is  a  contriving  intelligence  adapting  the 
means  directly  to  that  end. 

Suppose,  however,  that  any  one  had  been  able 
to  show  that  the  watch  had  not  been  made  directly 
by  any  person,  but  that  it  was  the  result  of  the 
modification  of  another  watch  which  kept  time  but 
poorly  ;  and  that  this  again  had  proceeded  from  a 
structure  which  could  hardly  be  called  a  watch 
at  all  —  seeing  that  it  had  no  figures  on  the  dial 
and  the  hands  were  rudimentary  ;  and  that  going 
back  and  back  in  time  we  came  at  last  to  a  re- 
volving barrel  as  the  earliest  traceable  rudiment 
of  the  whole  fabric.  And  imagine  that  it  had 
been  possible  to  show  that  all  these  changes 
had  resulted,  first,  from  a  tendency  of  the  structure 
to  vary  indefinitely  ;  and  secondly,  from  something 
in  the  surrounding  world  which  helped  all  variations 
in  the  direction  of  an  accurate  time-keeper,  and 
checked  all  those  in  other  directions  ;  then  it  is 
obvious  that  the  force  of  Paley's  argument  would 
be  gone.  For  it  would  be  demonstrated  that  an 


84      CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "   in 

apparatus  thoroughly  well  adapted  to  a  particular 
purpose  might  be  the  result  of  a  method  of  trial 
and  error  worked  by  unintelligent  agents,  as  well 
as  of  the  direct  application  of  the  means  appro- 
priate to  that  end,  by  an  intelligent  agent. 

Now  it  appears  to  us  that  what  we  have  here, 
for  illustration's  sake,  supposed  to  be  done  with 
the  watch,  is  exactly  what  the  establishment  of 
Darwin's  Theory  will  do  for  the  organic  world. 
For  the  notion  that  every  organism  has  been 
created  as  it  is  and  launched  straight  at  a  purpose, 
Mr.  Darwin  substitutes  the  conception  of  some- 
thing which  may  fairly  be  termed  a  method  of 
trial  and  error.  Organisms  vary  incessantly ;  of 
these  variations  the  few  meet  with  surrounding 
conditions  which  suit  them  and  thrive  ;  the  many 
are  unsuited  and  become  extinguished. 

According  to  Teleology,  each  organism  is  like  a 
rifle  bullet  fired  straight  at  a  mark  ;  according  to 
Darwin,  organisms  are  like  grapeshot  of  which  one.. 
hits  something  and  the  rest  fall  wide. 

For  the  teleologist  an  organism  exists  because 
^t~was  made  tor  the  conditions  in  which  it  is  found  ; 
for  the  Darwinian  an  organism  exists  because,  out 
of  many  of  its  kind,  it  is  the  only  one  which  has 
been  able  to  persist  in  the  conditions  in  which  it 
is  found. 

Teleology  implies  that  the  organs  of  every 
organism  are  perfect  and  cannot  be  improved  ;  the 
Darwinian  theory  simply  affirms  that  they  work 


HI    CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      85 

well  enough  to  enable  the  organism  to  hold  its 
own  against  such  competitors  as  it  has  met  with, 
but  admits  the  possibility  of  indefinite  improve- 
ment. But  an  example  may  bring  into  clearer 
light  the  profound  opposition  between  the  ordinary 
teleological,  and  the  Darwinian,  conception. 

Cats  catch  mice,  small  birds  and  the  like,  very 
well.  Teleology  tells  us  that  they  do  so  because 
they  were  expressly  constructed  for  so  doing — that 
they  are  perfect  mousing  apparatuses,  so  perfect 
and  so  delicately  adjusted  that  no  one  of  their  or- 
gans could  be  altered,  without  the  change  involving 
the  alteration  of  all  the  rest.  Darwinism  affirms 
on  the  contrary,  that  there  was  no  express  con- 
struction  concerned  in  the  matter ;  but  that  among 
the  multitudinous  variations  of  ^the  Feline  stock, 
many  of  which  died  out  from  want  of  power  to 
resist  opposing  influences,  some,  the  cats,  wero 
better  fitted  to  catch  mice  than  others,  whence 
they  throve  and  persisted,  in  proportion  to  the 
advantage  over  their  fellows  thus  offered  to  them. 

Far  from  imagining  that  cats  exist  in  order  to 
catch  mice  well,  Darwinism  supposes  that  cats  exist 
because  they  catch  mice  well — mousing  being  not 
the  end,  but  the  condition,  of  their  existence.  And 
if  the  cat  type  has  long  persisted  as  we  know  it, 
the  interpretation  of  the  fact  upon  Darwinian 
principles  would  be,  not  that  the  cats  have  re- 
mained invariable,  but  that  such  varieties  as  have 
incessantly  occurred  have  been,  on  the  whole,  less 


86     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      m 

fitted  to  get  on  in  the  world  than  the  existing 
stock. 

If  we  apprehend  the  spirit  of  the  "  Origin  of 
Species  "  rightly,  then,  nothing  can  be  more  en- 
tirely and  absolutely  opposed  to  Teleology,  as  it  is 
commonly  understood,  than  the  Darwinian  Theory. 
So  far  from  being  a  "  Teleologist  in  the  fullest  sense 
of  the  word,"  we  should  deny  that  he  is  a 
Teleologist  in  the  ordinary  sense  at  all;  and  we 
should  say  that,  apart  from  his  merits  as  a  na- 
turalist, he  has  rendered  a  most  remarkable  service 
to  philosophical  thought  by  enabling  the  student 
of  Nature  to  recognise,  to  their  fullest  extent,  those 
adaptations  to  purpose  which  are  so  striking  in  the 
organic  world,  and  which  Teleology  has  done  good 
service  in  keeping  before  our  minds,  without  being 
false  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  a  scientific 
conception  of  the  universe.  The  apparently  diverg- 
ing teachings  of  the  Teleologist  and  of  the  Morpho- 
logist  are  reconciled  by  the  Darwinian  hypothesis. 

But  leaving  our  own  impressions  of  the  "  Origin 
of  Species,"  and  turning  to  those  passages  especially 
cited  by  Professor  Kolliker,  we  cannot  admit  that 
they  bear  the  interpretation  he  puts  upon  them. 
Darwin,  if  we  read  him  rightly,  does  not  affirm  that 
every  detail  in  the  structure  of  an  animal  has  been 
created  for  its  benefit.  His  words  are  (p.  199)  : — 

"  The  foregoing  remarks  lead  me  to  say  a  few  words  on  the 
protest  lately  made  by  some  naturalists  against  the  utilitarian 
doctrine  that  every  detail  of  structure  has  been  produced  for  the 


HI     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     8? 

good  of  its  possessor.  They  believe  that  very  many  structures 
have  been  created  for  beauty  in  the  eyes  of  man,  or  for  mere 
variety.  This  doctrine,  if  true,  would  be  absolutely  fatal  to  my 
theory— yet  I  fully  admit  that  many  structures  are  of  no  direct 
use  to  their  possessor. " 

And  after  sundry  illustrations  and  qualifications, 
he  concludes  (p.  200)  :— 

"Hence  every  detail  of  structure  in  every  living  creature 
(making  some  little  allowance  for  the  direct  action  of  physical 
conditions)  may  be  viewed  either  as  having  been  of  special  use 
to  some  ancesti-al  form,  or  as  being  now  of  special  use  to  the 
descendants  of  this  form — either  directly,  or  indirectly,  through 
the  complex  laws  of  growth. " 

But  it  is  one  thing  to  say,  Darwinically,  that 
every  detail  observed  in  an  animal's  structure  is 
of  use  to  it,  or  has  been  of  use  to  its  ancestors ; 
and  quite  another  to  affirm,  teleologically,  that 
every  detail  of  an  animal's  structure  has  been 
created  for  its  benefit.  On  the  former  hypothesis, 
for  example,  the  teeth  of  the  foetal  Balccna  have  a 
meaning ;  on  the  latter,  none.  So  far  as  we  are 
aware,  there  is  not  a  phrase  in  the  "  Origin  of 
Species "  inconsistent  with  Professor  Kolliker's 
position,  that  "  varieties  arise  irrespectively  of  the 
notion  of  purpose,  or  of  utility,  according  to  general 
laws  of  Nature,  and  may  be  either  useful,  or  hurt- 
ful, or  indifferent." 

On  the  contrary,  Mr.  Darwin  writes  (Summary 
of  Chap.  V.)  :— 

"  Our  ignorance  of  the  laws  of  variation  is  profound.     Not  in 
one  case  out  of  a  hundred  can  we  pretend  to  assign  any  reason 
why  this  or  that  part  varies  more  or  less  from  the  same  part  in 
35 


88      CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     m 

the  parents.  .  .  The  external  conditions  of  life,  as  climate  and 
food,  &c.,  seem  to  have  induced  some  slight  modifications. 
Habit,  in  producing  constitutional  differences,  and  use,  in 
strengthening,  and  disuse,  in  weakening  and  diminishing  organs, 
seem  to  have  been  more  potent  in  their  effects." 

And  finally,  as  if  to  prevent  all  possible  miscon- 
ception, Mr.  Darwin  concludes  his  Chapter  on 
Variation  with  these  pregnant  words  : — 

' '  Whatever  the  cause  may  be  of  each  slight  difference  in  the 
offspring  from  their  parents — and  a  cause  for  each  must  exist — 
it  is  the  steady  accumulation,  through  natural  selection  of  such 
differences,  when  beneficial  to  the  individual,  that  gives  rise  to 
all  the  more  important  modifications  of  structure,  by  which  the 
innumerable  beings  on  the  face  of  the  earth  are  enabled  to 
struggle  with  each  other,  and  the  best  adapted  to  survive." 

We  have  dwelt  at  length  upon  this  subject,  be- 
cause of  its  great  general  importance,  and  because 
we  believe  that  Professor  Kolliker' s  criticisms  on 
this  head  are  based  upon  a  misapprehension  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  views — substantially  they  appear  to  us 
to  coincide  with  his  own.  The  other  objections 
which  Professor  Kolliker  enumerates  and  discusses 
are  the  following  : 1 — 

"1.  No  transitional  forms  between  existing  species  are 
known  ;  and  known  varieties,  whether  selected  or  spontaneous, 
never  go  so  far  as  to  establish  new  species." 

To  this  Professor  Kolliker  appears  to  attach 
some  weight.  He  makes  the  suggestion  that  the 

1  Space  will  not  allow  us  to  give  Professor  Kblliker's  argu- 
ments in  detail  ;  our  readers  will  find  a  full  and  accurate  version 
of  thorn  in  the  Header  for  August  13th  and  20th,  1864, 


Ill     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      89 

short-faced  tumbler  pigeon  may  be  a  pathological 
product. 

"2.  No  transitional  forms  of  animals  are  met  with  among  the 
organic  remains  of  earlier  epochs. " 

Upon  this,  Professor  Kolliker  remarks  that  the 
absence  of  transitional  forms  in  the  fossil  world, 
though  not  necessarily  fatal  to  Darwin's  views, 
weakens  his  case. 

"3.  The  struggle  for  existence  does  not  take  place." 
To  this  objection,  urged  by  Pelzeln,  Kolliker, 
very  justly,  attaches  no  weight. 

"4.  A  tendency  of  organisms  to  give  rise  to  useful  varieties, 
and  a  natural  selection,  do  not  exist. 

"  The  varieties  which  are  found  arise  in  consequence  of 
manifold  external  influences,  and  it  is  not  obvious  why  they  all, 
or  partially,  should  be  particularly  useful.  Each  animal  suffices 
for  its  own  ends,  is  perfect  of  its  kind,  and  needs  no  further 
development.  Should,  however,  a  variety  be  useful  and  even 
maintain  itself,  there  is  no  obvious  reason  why  it  should  change 
any  further.  The  whole  conception  of  the  imperfection  of 
organisms  and  the  necessity  of  their  becoming  perfected  is 
plainly  the  weakest  side  of  Darwin's  Theory,  and  a  pis  oiler 
(Nothbehelf)  because  Darwin  could  think  of  no  other  principle 
by  which  to  explain  the  metamorphoses  which,  as  I  also  believe, 
have  occurred." 

Here  again  we  must  venture  to  dissent  com- 
pletely from  Professor  Kolliker' s  conception  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  hypothesis.  It  appears  to  us  to  be  one 
of  the  many  peculiar  merits  of  that  hypothesis  that 
it  involves  no  belief  in  a  necessary  and  continual 
progress  of  organisms. 

Again,    Mr.    Darwin,    if  we   read   him   aright, 


90     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      m 

assumes  no  special  tendency  of  organisms  to  give 
rise  to  useful  varieties,  and  knows  nothing  of  needs 
of  development,  or  necessity  of  perfection.  What 
he  says  is,  in  substance :  All  organisms  vary.  It 
is  in  the  highest  degree  improbable  that  any  given 
variety  should  have  exactly  the  same  relations  to 
surrounding  conditions  as  the  parent  stock.  In 
that  case  it  is  either  better  fitted  (when  the  varia- 
tion may  be  called  useful),  or  worse  fitted,  to  cope 
with  them.  If  better,  it  will  tend  to  supplant  the 
parent  stock  ;  if  worse,  it  will  tend  to  be  extin- 
guished by  the  parent  stock. 

If  (as  is  hardly  conceivable)  the  new  variety  is 
so  perfectly  adapted  to  the  conditions  that  no 
improvement  upon  it  is  possible, — it  will  persist, 
because,  though  it  does  not  cease  to  vary,  the 
varieties  will  be  inferior  to  itself. 

If,  as  is  more  probable,  the  new  variety  is  by  no 
means  perfectly  adapted  to  its  conditions,  but  only 
fairly  well  adapted  to  them,  it  will  persist,  so  long 
as  none  of  the  varieties  which  it  throws  off  are 
better  adapted  than  itself. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  soon  as  it  varies  in  a 
useful  way,  i.e.  when  the  variation  is  such  as  to 
adapt  it  more  perfectly  to  its  conditions,  the  fresh 
variety  will  tend  to  supplant  the  former. 

So  far  from  a  gradual  progress  towards  perfection 
forming  any  necessary  part  of  the  Darwinian 
creed,  it  appears  to  us  that  it  is  perfectly  consistent 
with  indefinite  persistence  in  one  state,  or  with 


Ill     CRITICISMS  OX  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      91 

a  gradual  retrogression.  Suppose,  for  example,  a 
return  of  the  glacial  epoch  and  a  spread  of  polar 
climatal  conditions  over  the  whole  globe.  The 
operation  of  natur-al  selection  under  these  circum- 
stances would  tend,  on  the  whole,  to  the  weeding 
out  of  the  higher  organisms  and  the  cherishing  of 
the  lower  forms  of  life.  Cryj)togamic  vegetation 
would  have  the  advantage  over  Phanerogamic  ^ 
Hydrozoa  over  Corals  ;  Crustacea  over  Insecta,  and 
Amphipoda  and  Isopoda  over  the  higher  Crustacea  ; 
Cetaceans  and  Seals  over  the  Primates;  the 
civilisation  of  the  Esquimaux  over  that  of  the 
European. 

"  5.  Pelzeln  has  also  objected  that  if  the  later  organisms  have 
proceeded  from  the  earlier,  the  whole  developmental  series,  from 
the  simplest  to  the  highest,  could  not  now  exist ;  in  such  a  case- 
the  simpler  organisms  must  have  disappeared." 

To  this  Professor  Kolliker  replies,  with  perfect 
justice,  that  the  conclusion  drawn  by  Pelzeln  does 
not  really  follow  from  Darwin's  premises,  and  that, 
if  we  take  the  facts  of  Palaeontology  as  they 
stand,  they  rather  support  than  oppose  Darwin's 
theory. 

"  6.  Great  weight  must  be  attached  to  the  objection  brought 
forward  by  Huxley,  otherwise  a  warm  supporter  of  Darwin's 
hypothesis,  that  we  know  of  no  varieties  which  are  sterile  with 
one  another,  as  is  the  rule  among  sharply  distinguished  animal 
forms. 

"  If  Darwin  is  right,  it  must  be  demonstrated  that  forms  may 
be  produced  by  selection,  which,  like  the  present  sharply  dis- 
tinguished animal  forms,  are  infertile,  when  coupled  with  one 
another,  and  this  has  not  been  done." 


92      CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "    m 

The  weight  of  this  objection  is  obvious  ;  but  our 
ignorance  of  the  conditions  of  fertility  and  sterility, 
the  want  of  carefully  conducted  experiments 
extending  over  long  series  of  years,  and  the 
strange  anomalies  presented  by  the  results  of  the 
cross-fertilisation  of  many  plants,  should  all,  as 
Mr.  Darwin  has  urged,  be  taken  into  account  in 
considering  it. 

The  seventh  objection  is  that  we  have  already 
discussed  (supra  p.  82). 

The  eighth  and  last  stands  as  follows  : — 

"8.  The  developmental  theory  of  Darwin  is  not  needed  to 
enable  us  to  understand  the  regular  harmonious  progress  of  the 
complete  series  of  organic  forms  from  the  simpler  to  the  more 
perfect. 

"  The  existence  of  general  laws  of  Nature  explains  this 
harmony,  even  if  we  assume  that  all  beings  have  arisen  separately 
and  independent  of  one  another.  Darwin  forgets  that  inorganic 
nature,  in  which  there  can  be  no  thought  of  genetic  connexion 
of  forms,  exhibits  the  same  regular  plan,  the  same  harmony,  as 
the  organic  world  ;  and  that,  to  cite  only  one  example,  there  is 
as  much  a  natural  system  of  minerals  as  of  plants  and 
animals." 

We  do  not  feel  quite  sure  that  we  seize 
Professor  Kolliker's  meaning  here,  but  he  appears 
to  suggest  that  the  observation  of  the  general  order 
and  harmony  which  pervade  inorganic  nature, 
would  lead  us  to  anticipate  a  similar  order  and 
harmony  in  the  organic  world.  And  this  is  no 
doubt  true,  but  it  by  no  means  follows  that  the 
particular  order  and  harmony  observe'd  among 
them  should  be  that  which  we  see.  Surely  the 


Ill    CRITICISMS  OX  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      93 

stripes  of  dun  horses,  and  the  teeth  of  the  foetal 
Balccna,  are  not  explained  by  the  "  existence  of 
general  laws  of  Nature."  Mr.  Darwin  endeavours 
to  explain  the  exact  order  of  organic  nature 
which  exists;  not  the  mere  fact  that  there  is 
some  order. 

And  with  regard  to  the  existence  of  a  natural 
system  of  minerals  ;  the  obvious  reply  is  that 
there  may  be  a  natural  classification  of  any 
objects — of  stones  on  a  sea-beach,  or  of  works  of 
art;  a  natural  classification  being  simply  an 
assemblage  of  objects  in  groups,  so  as  to  express 
their  most  important  and  fundamental  resem- 
blances and  differences.  No  doubt  Mr.  Darwin 
believes  that  those  resemblances  and  differences 
upon  which  our  natural  systems  or  classifications 
of  animals  and  plants  are  based,  are  resemblances 
and  differences  which  have  been  produced  gene- 
tically, but  we  can  discover  no  reason  for  suppos- 
ing that  he  denies  the  existence  of  natural  classi- 
fications of  other  kinds. 

And,  after  all,  is  it  quite  so  certain  that  a 
genetic  relation  may  not  underlie  the  classification 
of  minerals  ?  The  inorganic  world  has  not  always 
been  what  we  see  it.  It  has  certainly  had  its 
metamorphoses,  and,  very  probably,  a  long 
"  Entwickelungsgeschichte "  out  of  a  nebular 
blastema.  Who  knows  how  far  that  amount  of 
likeness  among  sets  of  minerals,  in  virtue  of  which 
they  are  now  grouped  into  families  and  orders, 


94     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     in 

may  not  be  the  expression  of  the  common  condi- 
tions to  which  that  particular  patch  of  nebulous 
fog,  which  may  have  been  constituted  by  their 
atoms,  and  of  which  they  may  be,  in  the  strictest 
sense,  the  descendants,  was  subjected  ? 

It  will  be  obvious  from  what  has  preceded,  that 
we  do  not  agree  with  Professor  Kolliker  in  think- 
ing the  objections  which  he  brings  forward  so 
weighty  as  to  be  fatal  to  Darwin's  view.  But  even 
if  the  case  were  otherwise,  we  should  be  unable  to 
accept  the  "  Theory  of  Heterogeneous  Generation  " 
which  is  offered  as  a  substitute.  That  theory  is 
thus  stated  : — 

"The  fundamental  conception  of  this  hypothesis  is,  that, 
under  the  influence  of  a  gener;il  law  of  development,  the  germs 
of  organisms  produce  others  different  from  themselves. 
This  might  happen  (1)  by  the  fecundated  ova  passing,  in  the 
course  of  their  development,  under  particular  circumstances,  into 
higher  forms  ;  (2)  by  the  primitive  and  later  organisms  produc- 
ing other  organisms  without  fecundation,  out  of  germs  or  eggs 
(Parthenogenesis)." 

In  favour  of  this  hypothesis,  Professor  Kolliker 
adduces  the  well-known  facts  of  Agamogenesis,  or 
"  alternate  generation  "  ;  the  extreme  dissimilarity 
of  the  males  and  females  of  many  animals ;  and  of 
the  males,  females,  and  neuters  of  those  insects 
which  live  in  colonies :  and  he  defines  its  relations 
to  the  Darwinian  theory  as  follows  : — 

"  It  is  obvious  that  my  hypothesis  is  apparently  very  similar 
to  Darwin's,  inasmuch  as  I  also  consider  that  the  various  forms 
of  animals  have  proceeded  directly  from  one  another.  My 
hypothesis  of  the  creation  of  organisms  by  heterogeneous  genera- 


in     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     95 

tion,  however,  is  distinguished  very  essentially  from  Darwin's 
by  the  entire  absence  of  the  principle  of  useful  variations  and 
their  natural  selection  :  and  my  fundamental  conception  is  this, 
that  a  great  plan  of  development  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the 
origin  of  the  whole  organic  world,  impelling  the  simpler  forms 
to  more  and  more  complex  developments.  How  this  law 
operates,  what  influences  determine  the  development  of  the 
eggs  and  germs,  and  impel  them  to  assume  constantly  new 
forms,  I  naturally  cannot  pretend  to  say  ;  but  I  can  at  least 
adduce  the  great  analogy  of  the  alternation  of  generations.  If 
a  Bipinnaria,  a  Brachiolnria,  a  Pluteus,  is  competent  to  produce 
the  Echinoderm,  which  is  so  widely  different  from  it ;  if  a 
hydroid  polype  can  produce  the  higher  Medusa  ;  if  the  vermiform 
Trematode  'nurse'  can  develop  within  itself  the  very  unlike 
Cercaria,  it  will  not  appear  impossible  that  the  egg,  or  ciliated 
embryo,  of  a  sponge,  for  once,  under  special  conditions,  might 
become  a  hydroid  polype,  or  the  embryo  of  a  Medusa,  an 
Echinoderm." 

It  is  obvious,  from  these  extracts,  that  Pro- 
fessor Kolliker's  hypothesis  is  based  upon  the 
supposed  existence  of  a  close  analogy  between  the 
phsenomena  of  Agamogenesis  and  the  production 
of  new  species  from  pre-existing  ones.  But  is  the 
analogy  a  real  one  ?  We  think  that  it  is  not,  and, 
by  the  hypothesis  cannot  be, 

For  what  are  the  phaenomena  of  Agamogenesis, 
stated  generally  ?  An  impregnated  egg  develops 
into  a  sexless  form,  A  ;  this  gives  rise,  non-sexually, 
to  a  second  form  or  forms,  B,  more  or  less  different 
from  A.  B  may  multiply  non-sexually  again  ;  in 
the  simpler  cases,  however,  it  does  not,  but,  acquir- 
ing sexual  characters,  produces  impregnated  eggs 
from  whence  A,  once  more,  arises. 


96      CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     m 

No  case  of  Agamogenesis  is  known  in  which 
when  A  differs  widely  from  B,  it  is  itself  capable  of 
sexual  propagation.  No  case  whatever  is  known 
in  which  the  progeny  of  B,  by  sexual  generation, 
is  other  than  a  reproduction  of  A. 

But  if  this  be  a  true  statement  of  the  nature  of 
the  process  of  Agamogenesis,  how  can  it  enable  us 
to  comprehend  the  production  of  new  species  from 
already  existing  ones  ?  Let  us  suppose  Hyagnas 
to  have  preceded  Dogs,  and  to  have  produced  the 
latter  in  this  way.  Then  the  Hyasna  will  represent 
A,  and  the  Dog,  B.  The  first  difficulty  that  pre- 
sents itself  is  that  the  Hyasna  must  be  non-sexual, 
or  the  process  will  be  wholly  without  analogy  in 
the  world  of  Agamogenesis.  But  passing  over  this 
difficulty,  and  supposing  a  male  and  female  Dog  to 
be  produced  at  the  same  time  from  the  Hyaana 
stock,  the  progeny  of  the  pair,  if  the  analogy  of 
the  simpler  kinds  of  Agamogenesis l  is  to  be  fol- 
lowed, should  be  a  litter,  not  of  puppies,  but  of 
young  Hysenas.  For  the  Agamogenetic  series  is 

1  If,  on  the  contrary,  we  follow  the  analogy  of  the  more  com- 
plex forms  of  Agamogenesis,  such  as  that  exhibited  by  some 
Trematoda  and  by  the  Aphides,  the  Hyaena  must  produce,  non- 
sexually,  a  brood  of  sexless  Dogs,  from  which  other  sexless 
Dogs  must  proceed.  At  the  end  of  a  certain  number  of  terms 
of  the  series,  the  Dogs  would  acquire  sexes  and  generate  young  ; 
but  these  young  would  be,  not  Dogs,  but  Hyaenas  In  fact,  we 
have  demonstrated,  in  Agamogenetic  phenomena,  that  inevitable 
recurrence  to  the  original  type,  which  is  asserted  to  be  true  of 
variations  in  general,  by  Mr.  Darwin's  opponents;  and  which, 
if  the  assertion  could  be  changed  into  a  demonstration,  would, 
ill  fact,  be  fatal  to  his  hypothesis. 


Ill     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "      97 

always,  as  we  have  seen,  A  :  B  :  A  :  B,  &c. ;  whereas, 
for  the  production  of  a  new  species,  the  series  must 
be  A  :  B  :  B  :  B,  &c.  The  production  of  new  species, 
or  genera,  is  the  extreme  permanent  divergence 
from  the  primitive  stock.  All  known  Agamo- 
genetic  processes,  on  the  other  hand,  end  in  a  com- 
plete return  to  the  primitive  stock.  How  then  is 
the  production  of  new  species  to  be  rendered 
intelligible  by  the  analogy  of  Agamogenesis  ? 

The  other  alternative  put  by  Professor  Kolliker 
— the  passage  of  fecundated  ova  in  the  course  of 
their  development  into  higher  forms — would,  if  it 
occurred,  be  merely  an  extreme  case  of  variation  in 
the  Darwinian  sense,  greater  in  degree  than,  but 
perfectly  similar  in  kind  to,  that  which  occurred 
when  the  well-known  Ancon  Earn  was  developed 
from  an  ordinary  Ewe's  ovum.  Indeed  we  have 
always  thought  that  Mr.  Darwin  has  unnecessarily 
hampered  himself  by  adhering  so  strictly  to  his 
favourite  "  Natura  non  facit  saltum."  We  greatly 
suspect  that  she  does  make  considerable  jumps  in 
the  way  of  variation  now  and  then,  and  that  these 
saltations  give  rise  to  some  of  the  gaps  which  ap- 
pear to  exist  in  the  series  of  known  forms. 

Strongly  and  freely  as  we  have  ventured  to 
disagree  with  Professor  Kolliker,  we  have  always 
done  so  with  regret,  and  we  trust  without  violating 
that  respect  which  is  due,  not  only  to  his  scientific 
eminence  and  to  the  careful  study  which  he  has 


98      CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     m 

devoted  to  the  subject,  but  to  the  perfect  fairness 
of  his  argumentation,  and  the  generous  appreciation 
of  the  worth  of  Mr.  Darwin's  labours  which  he 
always  displays.  It  would  be  satisfactory  to  be 
able  to  say  as  much  for  M.  Flourens. 

But  the  Perpetual  Secretary  of  the  French 
Academy  of  Sciences  deals  with  Mr.  Darwin  as  the 
first  Napoleon  would  have  treated  an  "  ideologue  ; " 
and  while  displaying  a  painful  weakness  of  logic 
and  shallowness  of  information,  assumes  a  tone  of 
authority,  which  always  touches  upon  the  ludicrous, 
and  sometimes  passes  the  limits  of  good  breeding. 

For  example  (p.  56) : — 

"M.  Darwin  continue  :  '  Aucune  distinction  absolue  n'a  ete 
et  ne  peut  etre  etablie  entre  les  especes  et  les  varietes.'  Je  vous 
ai  deja  dit  que  vous  vous  trompiez  ;  une  distinction  absolue 
separe  les  varietes  d'avec  les  especes." 

"  Je  vous  ai  ddjd  dit  ;  moi,  M.  le  Secretaire  per- 
pe"tuel  de  TAcademie  des  Sciences  :  et  vous 

"  'Qui  n'etes  rien, 

Pas  meme  Academicien  ; ' 

what  do  you  mean  by  asserting  the  contrary  ? " 
Being  devoid  of  the  blessings  of  an  Academy  in 
England,  we  are  unaccustomed  to  see  our  ablest 
men  treated  in  this  fashion,  even  by  a  "  Perpetual 
Secretary." 

Or  again,  considering  that  if  there  is  any  one 
quality  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work  to  which  friends  and 
foes  have  alike  borne  witness,  it  is  his  candour  and 


Ill     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     99 

fairness  in  admitting  and  discussing  objections, 
what  is  to  be  thought  of  M.  Flourens'  assertion, 
that 

' '  M.  Darwin  ne  cite  que  les  auteurs  qui  partagent  ses 
opinions."  (P.  40.) 

Once  more  (p.  65)  : — 

' '  Enfin  1'ouvrage  de  M.  Darwin  a  para.  On  nc  peut  qu'etre 
frappe  du  talent  de  1'auteur.  Mais  que  d'idees  obscures,  que 
d'idees  fausses !  Quel  jargon  metaphysique  jete  mal  a  propos 
dans  1'histoire  naturelle,  qui  tombe  dans  le  galimatias  desqu'elle 
sort  des  idees  claires,  des  idees  justes  !  Quel  langage  pretentieux 
et  vide  !  Quelles  personnifications  pueriles  et  surannees  !  O 
lucidite  !  O  solidite  de  1' esprit  Francais,  que  devenez-vous  ?  " 

"  Obscure  ideas,"  "  metaphysical  jargon,"  "  pre- 
tentious and  empty  language,"  "  puerile  and 
superannuated  personifications."  Mr.  Darwin  has 
many  and  hot  >  opponents  on  this  side  of  the 
Channel  and  in  Germany,  but  we  do  not  recollect 
to  have  found  precisely  these  sins  in  the  long 
catalogue  of  those  hitherto  laid  to  his  charge.  It 
is  worth  while,  therefore,  to  examine  into  these 
discoveries  effected  solely  by  the  aid  of  the 
"lucidity  and  solidity"  of  the  mind  of  M. 
Flourens. 

According  to  M.  Flourens,  Mr.  Darwin's  great 
error  is  that  he  has  personified  Nature  (p.  10), 
and  further  that  he  has 

"  imagined  a  natural  selection  :  he  imagines  afterwards  that 
tliis  power  of  selecting  (pouwird'ilire]  which  he  gives  to  Nature 
is  similar  to  the  power  of  man.  These  two  suppositions  ad- 


100   CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     m 

mitted,  nothing  stops  him  :  he  plays  with  Nature  as  he  likes, 
and  makes  her  do  all  he  pleases. "     (P.  6. ) 

And  this  is  the  way  M.  Flourens  extinguishes 
natural  selection : 

"Voyonsdonc  encore  une  fois,  ce  qu'il  peut  y  avoir  de  fonde 
dans  ce  qu'on  nomme  Election  naturelle. 

' '  L 'election  naturelle  n'est  sous  un  autre  nom  que  la  nature. 
Pour  un  etfe  organise,  la  nature  n'est  que  1'organisation,  ni  plus 
ni  moins. 

"II  faudra  done  aussi  personnifier  1'organisation,  et  dire  que 
T  organisation  choisit  I 'organisation.  L' election  naturelle  est 
cette  forme  substantial?  dont  on  jouait  autrefois  avec  tant  de 
facilite.  Aristote  disait  que  'Si  1'art  de  batir  etait  dans  lebois, 
cet  art  agirait  comme  la  nature.'  A  la  place  de  I' art  de  bdtir 
M.  Darwin  met  Selection  naturelle,  et  c'est  tout  un :  1'un  n'est 
pas  plus  chimerique  que  1'autre."  (P.  31.) 

And  this  is  really  all  that  M.  Flourens  can  make 
of  Natural  Selection.  We  have  given  the  original, 
in  fear  lest  a  translation  should  be  regarded  as  a 
travesty ;  but  with  the  original  before  the  reader, 
we  may  try  to  analyse  the  passage.  "  For  an 
organised  being,  Nature  is  only  organisation, 
neither  more  nor  less." 

Organised  beings  then  have  absolutely  no 
relation  to  inorganic  nature  :  a  plant  does  not 
depend  on  soil  or  sunshine,  climate,  depth  in  the 
ocean,  height  above  it;  the  quantity  of  saline 
matters  in  water  have  no  influence  upon  animal 
life ;  the  substitution  of  carbonic  acid  for  oxygen 
in  our  atmosphere  would  hurt  nobody !  That 
these  are  absurdities  no  one  should  know  better 


HI     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "    101 

than  M.  Flourens;  but  they  are  logical  deductions 
from  the  assertion  just  quoted,  and  from  the 
further  statement  that  natural  selection  means 
only  that  "  organisation  chooses  and  selects 
organisation." 

For  if  it  be  once  admitted  (what  no  sane  man 
denies)  that  the  chances  of  life  of  any  given 
organism  are  increased  by  certain  conditions  (A) 
and  diminished  by  their  opposites  (B),  then  it  is 
mathematically  certain  that  any  change  of  con- 
ditions in  the  direction  of  (A)  will  exercise  a 
selective  influence  in  favour  of  that  organism, 
tending  to  its  increase  and  multiplication,  while 
any  change  in  the  direction  of  (B)  will  exercise  a 
selective  influence  against  that  organism,  tending 
to  its  decrease  and  extinction. 

Or,  on  the  other  hand,  conditions  remaining  the 
same,  let  a  given  organism  vary  (and  no  one 
doubts  that  they  do  vary)  in  two  directions  :  into 
one  form  (a)  better  fitted  to  cope  with  these  con- 
ditions than  the  original  stock,  and  a  second  (b~) 
less  well  adapted  to  them.  Then  it  is  no  less  certain 
that  the  conditions  in  question  must  exercise  a 
selective  influence  in  favour  of  (a)  and  against  (6), 
so  that  (a)  will  tend  to  predominance,  and  (&)  to 
extirpation. 

That  M.  Flourens  should  be  unable  to  perceive 
the  logical  necessity  of  these  simple  arguments, 
which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  all  Mr.  Darwin's 
reasoning ;  that  he  should  confound  an  irrefragable 


102  CRITICISMS  ON  "THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES"     m 

deduction  from  the  observed  relations  of  organisms 
to  the  conditions  which  lie  around  them,  with  a 
metaphysical "  forme  substantielle,"  or  a  chimerical 
personification  of  the  powers  of  Nature,  would  be 
incredible,  were  it  not  that  other  passages  of  his 
work  leave  no  room  for  doubt  upon  the  subject. 

"  On.  imagine  une  Election  naturelle  que,  pour  plus  de  menage- 
ment,  on  me  (lit  etre  inconseicnte,  sans  s'apercevoir  que  le  contre- 
sens  litteral  est  precisement  la  :  election  inconsciente."  (P.  52.) 

"  J'ai  deja  dit  ce  qu'il  faut  penser  de  I' Election  naturelle.  Ou 
lelection  naturelle  n'est  rien,  ou  c'est  la  nature  :  mais  la  nature 
douee  Selection,  mais  la  nature  personnifiee  :  derniere  erreur  du 
dernier  siecle  :  Le  xixe  ne  fait  plus  de  personnifications."  (P. 
53.) 

M.  Flourens  cannot  imagine  an  unconscious 
selection — it  is  for  him  a  contradiction  in  terms. 
Did  M.  Flourens  ever  visit  one  of  the  prettiest 
watering-places  of  "  la  belle  France,"  the  Baie 
d'Arcachon  ?  If  so,  he  will  probably  have  passed 
through  the  district  of  the  Landes,  and  will  have 
had  an  opportunity  of  observing  the  formation  of 
"  dunes "  on  a  grand  scale.  What  are  these 
"  dunes  "  ?  The  winds  and  waves  of  the  Bay  of 
Biscay  have  not  much  consciousness,  and  yet  they 
have  with  great  care  "  selected,"  from  among  an 
infinity  of  masses  of  silex  of  all  shapes  and  sizes, 
which  have  been  submitted  to  their  action,  all  the 
grains  of  sand  below  a  certain  size,  and  have 
heaped  them  by  themselves  over  a  great  area. 
This  sand  has  been  "  unconsciously  selected  "  from 


Ill     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "   103 

amidst  the  gravel  in  which  it  first  lay  with  as 
much  precision  as  if  man  had  "consciously 
selected"  it  by  the  aid  of  a  sieve.  Physical 
Geology  is  full  of  such  selections — of  the  picking 
out  of  the  soft  from  the  hard,  of  the  soluble  from 
the  insoluble,  of  the  fusible  from  the  infusible,  by 
natural  agencies  to  which  we  are  certainly  not  in 
the  habit  of  ascribing  consciousness. 

But  that  which  wind  and  sea  are  to  a  sandy 
beach,  the  sum  of  influences,  which  we  term  the 
"  conditions  of  existence,"  is  to  living  organisms. 
The  weak  are  sifted  out  from  the  strong.  A  frosty 
night  "  selects "  the  hardy  plants  in  a  plantation 
from  among  the  tender  ones  as  effectually  as  if  it 
were  the  wind,  and  they,  the  sand  and  pebbles,  of 
our  illustration ;  or,  on  the  other  hand,  as  if  the 
intelligence  of  a  gardener  had  been  operative  in 
cutting  the  weaker  organisms  down.  The  thistle, 
which  has  spread  over  the  Pampas,  to  the  de- 
struction of  native  plants,  has  been  more  effectually 
"  selected  "  by  the  unconscious  operation  of  natural 
conditions  than  if  a  thousand  agriculturists  had 
spent  their  time  in  sowing  it. 

It  is  one  of  Mr.  Darwin's  many  great  services 
to  Biological  science  that  he  has  demonstrated  the 
significance  of  these  facts.  He  has  shown  that — 
given  variation  and  given  change  of  conditions — 
the  inevitable  result  is  the  exercise  of  such  an 
influence  upon  organisms  that  one  is  helped  and 
another  is  impeded ;  one  tends  to  predominate, 

36 


104  CRITICISMS  ON  "THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES"    m 

another  to  disappear ;  and  thus  the  living  world 
bears  within  itself,  and  is  surrounded  by,  impulses 
towards  incessant  change. 

But  the  truths  just  stated  are  as  certain  as  any 
other  physical  laws,  quite  independently  of  the 
truth,  or  falsehood,  of  the  hypothesis  which  Mr. 
Darwin  has  based  upon  them;  and  that  M. 
Flourens,  missing  the  substance  and  grasping  at  a 
shadow,  should  be  blind  to  the  admirable  exposi- 
tion of  them,  which  Mr.  Darwin  has  given,  and  see 
nothing  there  but  a  "derniere  erreur  du  dernier 
siecle  " — a  personification  of  Nature — leads  us 
indeed  to  cry  with  him :  "  O  lucidite  !  O  solidite 
de  1'esprit  FranQais,  que  devenez-vous  ?  " 

M.  Flourens  has,  in  fact,  utterly  failed  to  com- 
prehend the  first  principles  of  the  doctrine  which 
he  assails  so  rudely.  His  objections  to  details  are 
of  the  old  sort,  so  battered  and  hackneyed  on  this 
side  of  the  Channel,  that  not  even  a  Quarterly 
Reviewer  could  be  induced  to  pick  them  up  for 
the  purpose  of  pelting  Mr.  Darwin  over  again. 
We  have  Cuvier  and  the  mummies ;  M.  Roulin 
and  the  domesticated  animals  of  America;  the 
difficulties  presented  by  hybridism  and  by  Palaeon- 
tology; Darwinism  a  rifacciamcnto  of  De  Maillet 
and  Lamarck ;  Darwinism  a  system  without  a 
commencement,  and  its  author  bound  to  believe  in 
M.  Pouchet,  &c.  &c.  How  one  knows  it  all  by 
heart,  and  with  what  relief  one  reads  at  p.  65 — 
"  Je  laisse  M.  Darwin  1 " 


Ill     CRITICISMS  ON  "  THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "   105 

But  we  cannot  leave  M.  Flourens  without  calling 
our  readers'  attention  to  his  wonderful  tenth 
chapter,  "  De  la  Preexistence  des  Germes  et  de 
1'Epigenese,"  which  opens  thus  : — 

"  Spontaneous  generation  is  only  a  chimaera.  This  point 
established,  two  hypotheses  remain  :  that  of  pre-existence  and 
that  of  epigcncsis.  The  one  of  these  hypotheses  has  as  little 
foundation  as  the  other. "  (P.  163.) 

' '  The  doctrine  of  epigenesis  is  derived  from  Harvey  :  follow- 
ing by  ocular  inspection  the  development  of  the  new  being  in 
the  Windsor  does,  he  saw  each  part  appear  successively,  and 
taking  the  moment  of  appearance  for  the  moment  of  formation 
he  imagined  epigenesis."  (P.  165.) 

On  the  contrary,  says  M.  Flourens  (p.  167),- 

"  The  new  being  is  formed  at  a  stroke  (lout  d'un  coup),  as  a 
•whole,  instantaneously  ;  it  is  not  formed  part  by  part,  and  at 
different  times.  It  is  formed  at  once  at  the  single  individual 
moment  at  which  the  conjunction  of  the  male  and  female 
elements  takes  place." 

It  will  be  observed  that  M.  Flourens  uses 
language  which  cannot  be  mistaken.  For  him, 
the  labours  of  Von  Baer,  of  Rathke,  of  Coste,  and 
their  contemporaries  and  successors  in  Germany, 
France,  and  England,  are  non-existent :  and,  as 
Darwin  "  imagina  "  natural  selection,  so  Harvey 
"imagina"  that  doctrine  which  gives  him  an  even 
greater  claim  to  the  veneration  of  posterity  than 
his  better  known  discovery  of  the  circulation  of 
the  blood. 

Language  such  as  that  we  have  quoted  is,  ill 
fact,  so  preposterous,  so  utterly  incompatible  with 


106   CRITICISMS  ON  "THE  ORIGIN  OF  SPECIES  "     m 

anything  but  absolute  ignorance  of  some  of  the 
best  established  facts,  that  we  should  have  passed 
it  over  in  silence  had  it  not  appeared  to  afford 
some  clue  to  M.  Flourens'  unhesitating,  a  priori, 
repudiation  of  all  forms  of  the  doctrine  of  pro- 
gressive modification  of  living  beings.  He  whose 
mind  remains  uninfluenced  by  an  acquaintance 
with  the  phsenomena  of  development,  must  indeed 
lack  one  of  the  chief  motives  towards  the 
endeavour  to  trace  a  genetic  relation  between 
the  different  existing  forms  of  life.  Those  who 
are  ignorant  of  Geology,  find  no  difficulty  in 
believing  that  the  world  was  made  as  it  is ;  and 
the  shepherd,  untutored  in  history,  sees  no  reason 
to  regard  the  green  mounds  which  indicate  the 
site  of  a  Roman  camp,  as  aught  but  part  and 
parcel  of  the  primaeval  hill -side.  So  M.  Flourens, 
who  believes  that  embryos  are  formed  "  tout  d'un 
coup,"  naturally  finds  no  difficulty  in  conceiving 
that  species  came  into  existence  in  the  same 
way. 


IV 

THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS1 

[1869] 

CONSIDERING  that  Germany  now  takes  the  lead  of 
the  world  in  scientific  investigation,  and  particu- 
larly in  biology,  Mr.  Darwin  must  be  well  pleased 
at  the  rapid  spread  of  his  views  among  some  of 
the  ablest  and  most  laborious  of  German 
naturalists. 

Among  these,  Professor  Haeckel,  of  Jena,  is  the 
Coryphaeus.  I  know  of  no  more  solid  and  import- 
ant contributions  to  biology  in  the  past  seven 
years  than  Haeckel's  work  on  the  "  Radiolaria," 
and  the  researches  of  his  distinguished  colleague 
Gegenbaur,  in  vertebrate  anatomy;  while  in 
Haeckel's  "  Generelle  Morphologic  "  there  is  all 
the  force,  suggestiveness,  and,  what  I  may  term 

1  TM  Natural  History  of  Creation.  By  Dr.  Ernst  Haeckel. 
[Naturliche  Schiipfungs-Gcschichtc.—Von  Dr.  Ernst  Haeckel, 
Professor  an  der  Universitat  Jena.]  Berlin,  1868. 


108  THE   GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  iv 

the  systematising  power,  of  Oken,  without  his  ex- 
travagance. The  "  Generelle  Morphologic  "  is,  in 
fact,  an  attempt  to  put  the  Doctrine  of  Evolution, 
so  far  as  it  applies  to  the  living  world,  into  a  logical 
form  ;  and  to  work  out  its  practical  applications  to 
their  final  results.  The  work  before  us,  again,  may 
be  said  to  be  an  exposition  of  the  "Generelle 
Morphologic  "  for  an  educated  public,  consisting, 
as  it  does,  of  the  substance  of  a  series  of  lectures 
delivered  before  a  mixed  audience  at  Jena,  in  the 
session  1867-8. 

"  The  Natural  History  of  Creation," — or,  as 
Professor  Haeckel  admits  it  would  have  been 
better  to  call  his  work,  "The  History  of  the 
Development  or  Evolution  of  Nature," — deals,  in 
the  first  six  lectures,  with  the  general  and  his- 
torical aspects  of  the  question  and  contains  a  very 
interesting  and  lucid  account  of  the  views  of  Lin- 
naeus, Cuvier,  Agassiz,  Goethe,  Oken,  Kant, 
Lamarck,  Lyell,  and  Darwin,  and  of  the  historical 
filiation  of  these  philosophers. 

The  next  six  lectures  are  occupied  by  a  well- 
digested  statement  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views.  The 
thirteenth  lecture  discusses  two  topics  which  are 
not  touched  by  Mr.  Darwin,  namely,  the  origin  of 
the  present  form  of  the  solar  system,  and  that  of 
living  matter.  Full  justice  is  done  to  Kant,  as  the 
originator  of  that  "  cosmic  gas  theory,"  as  the 
Germans  somewhat  quaintly  call  it,  which  is 
commonly  ascribed  to  Laplace.  With  respect  to 


IV  THE  GENEALOGY  OP  ANIMALS  109 

spontaneous  generation,  while  admitting  that  there 
is  no  experimental  evidence  in  its  favour,  Professor 
Haeckel  denies  the  possibility  of  disproving  it,  and 
points  out-  that  the  assumption  that  it  has  occurred 
is  a  necessary  part  of  the  doctrine  of  Evolution. 
The  fourteenth  lecture,  on  "  Schopfungs-Perioden 
und  Schopfungs-Urkunden,"  answers  pretty  much 
to  the  famous  disquisition  on  the  "  Imperfection 
of  the  Geological  Record "  in  the  "  Origin  of 
Species." 

The  following  five  lectures  contain  the  most 
original  matter  of  any,  being  devoted  to  "  Phylo- 
geny,"  or  the  working  out  of  the  details  of  the 
process  of  Evolution  in  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms,  so  as  to  prove  the  line  of  descent  of 
each  group  of  living  beings,  and  to  furnish  it 
with  its  proper  genealogical  tree,  or  "  phylum." 

The  last  lecture  considers  objections  and  sums 
up  the  evidence  in  favour  of  biological  Evolution. 

I  shall  best  testify  to  my  sense  of  the  value  of 
the  work  thus  briefly  analysed  if  I  now  proceed  to 
note  down  some  of  the  more  important  criticisms 
which  have  been  suggested  to  me  by  its  perusal. 

I.  In  more  than  one  place,  Professor  Haeckel 
enlarges  upon  the  service  which  the  "  Origin  of 
Species  "  has  done,  in  favouring  what  he  terms 
the  "  causal  or  mechanical  "  view  of  living  nature 
as  opposed  to  the  "  teleological  or  vitalistic  "  view. 
And  no  doubt  it  is  quite  true  that  the  doctrine  of 
Evolution  is  the  most  formidable  opponent  of  all 


110  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  IT 

the  commoner  and  coarser  forms  of  Teleology. 
But  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  service  to  the 
philosophy  of  Biology  rendered  by  Mr.  Darwin  is 
the  reconciliation  of  Teleology  and  Morphology, 
and  the  explanation  of  the  facts  of  both  which  his 
views  offer. 

The  Teleology  which  supposes  that  the  eye, 
such  as  we  see  it  in  man  or  one  of  the  higher  Verte- 
Irata,  was  made  with  the  precise  structure  which 
it  exhibits,  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  the  animal 
which  possesses  it  to  see,  has  undoubtedly  received 
its  death-blow.  Nevertheless  it  is  necessary  to 
remember  that  there  is  a  wider  Teleology,  which 
is  not  touched  by  the  doctrine  of  Evolution,  but  is 
actually  based  upon  the  fundamental  proposition 
of  Evolution.  That  proposition  is,  that  the  whole 
world,  living  and  not  living,  in  the  result  of  the 
mutual  interaction,  according  to  definite  laws,  of 
the  forces  possessed  by  the  molecules  of  which  the 
primitive  nebulosity  of  the  universe  was  composed. 
If  this  be  true,  it  is  no  less  certain  that  the  existing 
world  lay,  potentially,  in  the  cosmic  vapour  ;  and 
that  a  sufficient  intelligence  could,  from  a  know- 
ledge of  the  properties  of  the  molecules  of  that 
vapour,  have  predicted,  say  the  state  of  the  Fauna 
of  Britain  in  1869,  with  as  much  certainty  as  one 
can  say  what  will  happen  to  the  vapour  of  the 
breath  in  a  cold  winter's  day. 

Consider  a  kitchen  clock,  which  ticks  loudly, 
shows  the  hours,  minutes,  and  seconds,  strikes, 


IV  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  111 

cries  "  cuckoo  ! "  and  perhaps  shows  the  phases  of 
the  moon.  When  the  clock  is  wound  up,  all  the 
phenomena  which  it  exhibits  are  potentially  con- 
tained in  its  mechanism,  and  a  clever  clockmaker 
could  predict  all  it  will  do  after  an  examination  of 
its  structure. 

If  the  evolution  theory  is  correct,  the  mole- 
cular structure  of  the  cosmic  gas  stands  in 
the  same  relation  to  the  phenomena  of  the 
world  as  the  structure  of  the  clock  to  its  pheno- 
mena. 

Now  let  us  suppose  a  death-watch,  living  in  the 
clock-case,  to  be  a  learned  and  intelligent  student 
of  its  works.  He  might  say,  "  I  find  here  nothing 
but  matter  and  force  and  pure  mechanism  from 
beginning  to  end,"  and  he  would  be  quite  right. 
But  if  he  drew  the  conclusion  that  the  clock  was 
not  contrived  for  a  purpose,  he  would  be  quite 
wrong.  On  the  other  hand,  imagine  another 
death-watch  of  a  different  turn  of  mind.  He, 
listening  to  the  monotonous  "  tick !  tick  ! "  so 
exactly  like  his  own,  might  arrive  at  the  conclusion 
that  the  clock  was  itself  a  monstrous  sort  of 
death-watch,  and  that  its  final  cause  and  purpose 
was  to  tick.  How  easy  to  point  to  the  clear 
relation  of  the  whole  mechanism  to  the  pendulum, 
to  the  fact  that  the  one  thing  the  clock  did  always 
and  without  intermission  was  to  tick,  and  that  all 
the  rest  of  its  phenomena  were  intermittent  and 
subordinate  to  ticking  !  For  all  this,  it  is  certain 


112  THE  GENEALOGY   OF  ANIMALS  iv 

that  kitchen  clocks  are  not  contrived  for  the 
purpose  of  making  a  ticking  noise. 

Thus  the  teleological  theorist  would  be  as  wrong 
as  the  mechanical  theorist,  among  our  death- 
watches;  and,  probably,  the  only  death-watch  who 
would  be  right  would  be  the  one  who  should 
maintain  that  the  sole  thing  death-watches  could 
be  sure  about  was  the  nature  of  the  clock-works 
and  the  way  they  move ;  and  that  the  purpose  of 
the  clock  lay  wholly  beyond  the  purview  of  beetle 
faculties. 

Substitute  "  cosmic  vapour "  for  "  clock,"  and 
"  molecules "  for  "  works,"  and  the  application 
of  the  argument  is  obvious.  The  teleological 
and  the  mechanical  views  of  nature  are  not, 
necessarily,  mutually  exclusive.  On  the  contrary, 
the  more  purely  a  mechanist  the  speculator  is,  the 
more  firmly  does  he  assume  a  primordial  mo- 
lecular arrangement,  of  which  all  the  phenomena 
of  the  universe  are  the  consequences ;  and 
the  more  completely  is  he  thereby  at  the 
mercy  of  the  teleologist,  who  can  always  defy 
him  to  disprove  that  this  primordial  molecular 
arrangement  was  not  intended  to  evolve 
the  phenomena  of  the  universe.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  the  teleologist  assert  that  this,  that,  or 
the  other  result  of  the  working  of  any  part  of  the 
mechanism  of  the  universe  is  its  purpose  and  final 
cause,  the  mechanist  can  always  inquire  how  he 
knows  that  it  is  more  than  an  unessential  incident 


!V        THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      113 

— the  mere  ticking  of  the  clock,  which  he  mistakes 
for  its  function.  And  there  seems  to  be  no  reply 
to  this  inquiry,  any  more  than  to  the  further,  not 
irrational,  question,  why  trouble  one's  self  about 
matters  which  are  out  of  reach,  when  the  working 
of  the  mechanism  itself,  which  is  of  infinite 
practical  importance,  affords  scope  for  all  our 
energies  ? 

Professor  Haeckel  has  invented  a  new  and  con- 
venient name  "  Dysteleology,"  for  the  study  of 
the  "  purposelessnesses "  which  are  observable  in 
living  organisms — such  as  the  multitudinous  cases 
of  rudimentary  and  apparently  useless  structures. 
I  confess,  however,  that  it  has  often  appeared  to 
me  that  the  facts  of  Dysteleology  cut  two  ways. 
If  we  are  to  assume,  as  evolutionists  in  general  do, 
that  useless  organs  atrophy,  such  cases  as  the 
existence  of  lateral  rudiments  of  toes,  in  the  foot 
of  a  horse,  place  us  in  a  dilemma.  For,  either 
these  rudiments  are  of  no  use  to  the  animal,  in 
which  case,  considering  that  the  horse  has  existed 
in  its  present  form  since  the  Pliocene  epoch,  they 
surely  ought  to  have  disappeared ;  or  they  are  of 
some  use  to  the  animal,  in  which  case  they  are  of 
no  use  as  arguments  against  Teleology.  A  similar, 
but  still  stronger,  argument  may  be  based  upon 
the  existence  of  teats,  and  even  functional  mam- 
mary glands,  in  male  mammals.  Numerous  cases 
of  "  Gynaecomasty,"  or  functionally  active  breasts 
in  men,  are  on  record,  though  there  is  no  mam- 


114  THE  GENEALOGY   OF  ANIMALS  iv 

malian  species  whatever  in  which  the  male  nor- 
mally suckles  the  young.  Thus,  there  can  be 
little  doubt  that  the  mammary  gland  was  as 
apparently  useless  in  the  remotest  male  mam- 
malian ancestor  of  man  as  in  living  men,  and  yet 
it  has  not  disappeared.  Is  it  then  still  profitable 
to  the  male  organism  to  retain  it  ?  Possibly  ;  but 
in  that  case  its  dysteleological  value  is  gone.1 

II.  Professor  Haeckel  looks  upon  the  causes 
which  have  led  to  the  present  diversity  of  living 
nature  as  twofold.  Living  matter,  he  tells  us,  is 
urged  by  two  impulses :  a  centripetal,  which  tends 
to  preserve  and  transmit  the  specific  form,  and 
which  he  identifies  with  heredity ;  and  a  centri- 
fugal, which  results  from  the  tendency  of  external 
conditions  to  modify  the  organism  and  effect  its 
adaptation  to  themselves.  The  internal  impulse 
is  conservative,  and  tends  to  the  preservation  of 
specific,  or  individual,  form  ;  the  external  impulse 
is  metamorphic,  and  tends  to  the  modification  of 
specific,  or  individual,  fcfrm. 

In  developing  his  views  upon  this  subject, 
Professor  Haeckel  introduces  qualifications  which 
disarm  some  of  the  criticisms  I  should  have  been 
disposed  to  offer ;  but  I  think  that  his  method  of 
stating  the  case  has  the  inconvenience  of  tending 
to  leave  out  of  sight  the  important  fact — which  is 
a  cardinal  point  in  the  Darwinian  hypothesis — 

1  [The  recent  discovery  of  the  important  part  played  by  the 
Thyroid  gland  should  be  a  warning  to  all  speculators  about 
useless  organs.  1893.] 


IV  THE   GENEALOGY   OF   ANIMALS  115 

that  the  tendency  to  vary,  in  a  given  organism,  may 
have  nothing  to  do  with  the  external  conditions  to 
•which  that  individual  organism  is  exposed,  but 
may  depend  wholly  upon  internal  conditions.  No 
one,  I  imagine,  would  dream  of  seeking  for  the 
cause  of  the  development  of  the  sixth  finger  and 
toe  in  the  famous  Maltese,  in  the  direct  influence 
of  the  external  conditions  of  his  life. 

I  conceive  that  both  hereditary  transmission 
and  adaptation  need  to  be  analysed  into  their 
constituent  conditions  by  the  further  application 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  Struggle  for  Existence.  It 
is  a  probable  hypothesis,  that  what  the  world  is  to 
organisms  in  general,  each  organism  is  to  the 
molecules  of  which  it  is  composed.  Multitudes  of 
these,  having  diverse  tendencies,  are  competing 
with  one  another  for  opportunity  to  exist  and 
multiply ;  and  the  organism,  as  a  whole,  is  as 
much  the  product  of  the  molecules  which  are 
victorious  as  the  Fauna,  or  Flora,  of  a  country  is 
the  product  of  the  victoridus  organic  beings  in  it. 

On  this  hypothesis,  hereditary  transmission  is 
the  result  of  the  victory  of  particular  molecules 
contained  in  the  impregnated  germ.  Adaptation 
to  conditions  is  the  result  of  the  favouring  of  the 
multiplication  of  those  molecules  whose  organising 
tendencies  are  most  in  harmony  with  such 
conditions.  In  this  view  of  the  matter,  conditions 
are  not  actively  productive,  but  are  passively 
permissive ;  they  do  not  cause  variation  in  any 


116  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  iv 

given  direction,  but  they  permit    and  favour   a 
tendency  in  that  direction  which  already  exists. 

It  is  true  that,  in  the  long  run,  the  origin  of 
the  organic  molecules  themselves,  and  of  their 
tendencies,  is  to  be  sought  in  the  external  world  ; 
but  if  we  carry  our  inquiries  as  far  back  as  this, 
the  distinction  between  internal  and  external 
impulses  vanishes.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we 
confine  ourselves  to  the  consideration  of  a  single 
organism,  I  think  it  must  be  admitted  that  the 
existence  of  an  internal  metamorphic  tendency 
must  be  as  distinctly  recognised  as  that  of  an 
internal  conservative  tendency ;  and  that  the 
influence  of  conditions  is  mainly,  if  not  wholly, 
the  result  of  the  extent  to  which  they  favour  the 
one,  or  the  other,  of  these  tendencies. 

III.  There  is  only  one  point  upon  which  I 
fundamentally  and  entirely  disagree  with  Professor 
Haeckel,  but  that  is  the  very  important  one  of 
his  conception  of  geological  time,  and  of  the 
meaning  of  the  stratified  rocks  as  records  and 
indications  of  that  time.  Conceiving  that  the 
stratified  rocks  of  an  epoch  indicate  a  period  of 
depression,  and  that  the  intervals  between  the 
epochs  correspond  with  periods  of  elevation  of 
which  we  have  no  record,  he  intercalates  between 
the  different  epochs,  or  periods,  intervals  which  he 
terms  "Ante-periods."  Thus,  instead  of  con- 
sidering the  Triassic,  Jurassic,  Cretaceous,  and 
Eocene  periods,  as  continuously  successive,  he 


IV  THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  117 

interposes  a  period  before  each,  as  an  "  Antetrias- 
zeit,"  "Antejura-zeit,"  "  Antecreta-zeit,"  "Anteo- 
cenzeit,"  &c.  And  he  conceives  that  the  abrupt 
changes  between  the  Faunae  of  the  different  forma- 
tions are  due  to  the  lapse  of  time,  of  which  we  have 
no  organic  record,  during  their  "Ante-periods." 

The  frequent  occurrence  of  strata  containing 
assemblages  of  organic  forms  which  are  inter- 
mediate between  those  of  adjacent  formations,  is, 
to  my  mind,  fatal  to  this  view.  In  the  well- 
known  St.  Cassian  beds,  for  example,  Palaeozoic 
and  Mesozoic  forms  are  commingled,  and,  between 
the  Cretaceous  and  the  Eocene  formations,  there 
are  similar  transitional  beds.  On  the  other  hand, 
in  the  middle  of  the  Silurian  series,  extensive 
unconformity  of  the  strata  indicates  the  lapse  of 
vast  intervals  of  time  between  the  deposit  of 
successive  beds,  without  any  corresponding  change 
in  the  Fauna. 

Professor  Haeckel  will,  I  fear,  think  me  unreason- 
able, if  I  say  that  he  seems  to  be  still  overshadowed 
by  geological  superstitions ;  and  that  he  will  have 
to  believe  in  the  completeness  of  the  geological 
record  far  less  than  he  does  at  present.  He  assumes, 
for  example,  that  there  was  no  dry  land,  nor  any 
terrestrial  life,  before  the  end  of  the  Silurian  epoch, 
simply  because,  up  to  the  present  time,  no  indica- 
tions of  fresh  water,  or  terrestrial  organisms,  have 
been  found  in  rocks  of  older  date.  And,  in 
speculating  upon  the  origin  of  a  given  group,  he 


118  THE   GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS  iv 

rarely  goes  further  back  than  the  "  Ante-period," 
which  precedes  that  in  which  the  remains  of 
animals  belonging  to  that  group  are  found.  Thus, 
as  fossil  remains  of  the  majority  of  the  groups  of 
Eeptilia  are  first  found  in  the  Trias,  they  are 
assumed  to  have  originated  in  the  "Antetriassic  " 
period,  or  between  the  Permian  and  Triassic 
epochs. 

I  confess  this  is  wholly  incredible  to  me.  The 
Permian  and  the  Triassic  deposits  pass  completely 
into  one  another ;  there  is  no  sort  of  discontinuity 
answering  to  an  unrecorded  "  Antetrias  "  ;  and, 
what  is  more,  we  have  evidence  of  immensely 
extensive  dry  land  during  the  formation  of  these 
deposits.  We  know  that  the  dry  land  of  the  Trias 
absolutely  teemed  with  reptiles  of  all  groups 
except  Pterodactyles,  Snakes,  and  perhaps  Tor- 
toises ;  there  is  every  probability  that  true  Birds 
existed,  and  Mammalia  certainly  did.  Of  the  in- 
habitants of  the  Permian  dry  land,  on  the  contrary, 
all  that  have  left  a  record  are  a  few  lizards.  Is  it 
conceivable  that  these  last  should  really  represent 
the  whole  terrestrial  population  of  that  time,  and 
that  the  development  of  Mammals,  of  Birds,  and 
of  the  highest  forms  of  Reptiles,  should  have  been 
crowded  into  the  time  during  which  the  Permian 
conditions  quietly  passed  away,  and  the  Triassic 
conditions  began  ?  Does  not  any  such  supposition 
become  in  the  highest  degree  improbable,  when, 
in  the  terrestrial  or  fresh- water  Labyrinthodonts, 


IV        THE  GENEALOGY  OF  ANIMALS      119 

which  lived  on  the  land  of  the  Carboniferous  epoch, 
as  well  as  on  that  of  the  Trias,  we  have  evidence 
that  one  form  of  terrestrial  life  persisted,  through- 
out all  these  ages,  with  no  important  modification  ? 
For  my  part,  having  regard  to  the  small  amount 
of  modification  (except  in  the  way  of  extinction) 
which  the  Crocodilian,  Lacertilian,  and  Chelonian 
Reptilia  have  undergone,  from  the  older  Mesozoic 
times  to  the  present  day,  I  cannot  but  put  the 
existence  of  the  common  stock  from  which  they 
sprang  far  back  in  the  Palaeozoic  epoch ;  and  I 
should  apply  a  similar  argumentation  to  all  other 
groups  of  animals. 

[The  remainder  of  this  essay  contains  a  discussion  of  questions 
of  taxonomy  and  phylogeny,  which  is  now  antiquated.  I  have 
reprinted  the  considerations  about  the  reconciliation  of  Teleology 
with  Morphology,  about  "  Dysteleology,"  and  about  the  struggle 
for  existence  within  the  organism,  because  it  has  happened  to 
me  to  be  charged  with  overlooking  them. 

In  discussing  Teleology,  I  ought  to  have  pointed  out,  as  I 
have  done  elsewhere  ( Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin,  vol.  ii. 
p.  202),  that  Paley  "  proleptically  accepted  the  modern  doctrine 
of  Evolution,"  (Natural  Theology,  chap,  xxiii.).  1893.] 


MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS1 

[1871] 

THE  gradual  lapse  of  time  has  now  separated  us  by 
more  than  a  decade  from  the  date  of  the  publi- 
cation of  the  "  Origin  of  Species  " —  and  whatever 
may  be  thought  or  said  about  Mr.  Darwin's  doc- 
trines, or  the  manner  in  which  he  has  propounded 
them,  this  much  is  certain,  that,  in  a  dozen  years, 
the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  has  worked  as  complete  a 
revolution  in  biological  science  as  the  "  Principia  " 
did  in  astronomy — and  it  has  done  so,  because,  in 
the  words  of  Helmholtz,  it  contains  "  an  essentially 
new  creative  thought."2 

And  as  time  has  slipped  by,  a  happy  change 

1  1.  Contributions  to  the  Theory  of  Natural  Selection.     By 
A.  R.  Wallace.    1870.— 2.    The  Genesis  of  Species.  By  St.  George 
Mivart,  F.R.S.     Second  Edition.     1871.—  3.  Darwin's  Descent 
of  Man.     Quarterly  Review,  July  1871. 

2  Helmholtz  :  Ucber  das  Ziel  und  die  Fortschritte  der  Natur- 
wissenschaft.     Eroffnungsrede  fur  die  Naturforscherversauim- 
lung  zu  Innsbruck.     1869. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  121 

has  come  over  Mr.  Darwin's  critics.  The  mixture 
of  ignorance  and  insolence  which,  at  first,  character- 
ised a  large  proportion  of  the  attacks  with  which 
he  was  assailed,  is  no  longer  the  sad  distinction  of 
anti-Darwinian  criticism.  Instead  of  abusive  non- 
sense, which  merely  discredited  its  writers,  we  read 
essays,  which  are,  at  worst,  more  or  less  intelligent 
and  appreciative ;  while,  sometimes,  like  that 
which  appeared  in  the  "  North  British  Review  "  for 
1867,  they  have  a  real  and  permanent  value. 

The  several  publications  of  Mr.  Wallace  and  Mr. 
Mivart  contain  discussions  of  some  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
views,  which  are  worthy  of  particular  attention,  not 
only  on  account  of  the  acknowledged  scientific 
competence  of  .these  writers,  but  because  they  ex- 
hibit an  attention  to  those  philosophical  questions 
which  underlie  all  physical  science,  which  is  as  rare 
as  it  is  needful.  And  the  same  may  be  said  of  an 
article  in  the  "  Quarterly  Review  "  for  July  1871, 
the  comparison  of  which  with  an  article  in  the 
same  Review  for  July  1860,  is  perhaps  the  best 
evidence  which  can  be  brought  forward  of  the 
change  which  has  taken  place  in  public  opinion 
on  "  Darwinism." 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer  admits  "the  certainty 
of  the  action  of  natural  selection  "  (p.  49) ;  and 
further  allows  that  there  is  an  a  priori  probability 
in  favour  of  the  evolution  of  man  from  some  lower 
animal  form,  if  these  lower  animal  forms  them- 
selves have  arisen  by  evolution. 


122  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

Mr.  Wallace  and  Mr.  Mivart  go  much  further 
than  this.  They  are  as  stout  believers  in  evolution 
as  Mr.  Darwin  himself;  but  Mr.  Wallace  denies 
that  man  can  have  been  evolved  from  a  lower 
animal  by  that  process  of  natural  selection  which 
he,  with  Mr.  Darwin,  holds  to  have  been  sufficient 
for  the  evolution  of  all  animals  below  man  ;  while 
Mr.  Mivart,  admitting  that  natural  selection  has 
been  one  of  the  conditions  of  the  evolution  of  the 
animals  below  man,  maintains  that  natural  se- 
lection must,  even  in  their  case,  have  been  supple- 
mented by  "  some  other  cause  " — of  the  nature  of 
which,  unfortunately,  he  does  not  give  us  any  idea. 
Thus  Mr.  Mivart  is  less  of  a  Darwinian  than  Mr. 
Wallace,  for  he  has  less  faith  in  the  power  of 
natural  selection.  But  he  is  more  of  an  evolutionist 
than  Mr.  Wallace,  because  Mr.  Wallace  thinks  it 
necessary  to  call  in  an  intelligent  agent — a  sort  of 
supernatural  Sir  John  Sebright — to  produce  even 
the  animal  frame  of  man ;  while  Mr.  Mivart  re- 
quires no  Divine  assistance  till  he  comes  to  man's 
soul. 

Thus  there  is  a  considerable  divergence  between 
Mr.  Wallace  and  Mr.  Mivart.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  are  some  curious  similarities  between  Mr. 
Mivart  and  the  Quarterly  Reviewer,  and  these 
are  sometimes  so  close,  that,  if  Mr.  Mivart  thought 
it  worth  while,  I  think  he  might  make  out  a 
good  case  of  plagiarism  against  the  Reviewer,  who 
studiously  abstains  from  quoting  him. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  123 

Both  the  Reviewer  and  Mr.  Mivart  reproach  Mr. 
Darwin  with  being,  "  like  so  many  other  physic- 
ists," entangled  in  a  radically  false  metaphysical 
system,  and  with  setting  at  nought  the  first 
principles  of  both  philosophy  and  religion.  Both 
enlarge  upon  the  necessity  of  a  sound  philo- 
sophical basis,  and  both,  I  venture  to  add,  make  a 
conspicuous  exhibition  of  its  absence.  The 
Quarterly  Reviewer  believes  that  man  "  differs 
more  from  an  elephant  or  a  gorilla  than  do  these 
from  the  dust  of  the  earth  on  which  they  tread," 
and  Mr.  Mivart  has  expressed  the  opinion  that 
there  is  more  difference  between  man  and  an  ape 
than  there  is  between  an  ape  and  a  piece  of 
granite.1 

And  even  when  Mr.  Mivart  (p.  86)  trips  in  a 
matter  of  anatomy,  and  creates  a  difficulty  for  Mr. 
Darwin  out  of  a  supposed  close  similarity  between 
the  eyes  of  fishes  and  cephalopods,  which  (as 
Gegenbaur  and  others  have  clearly  shown)  does 
not  exist,  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  adopts  the 
argument  without  hesitation  (p.  66). 

There  is  another  important  point,  however,  in 
which  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  Mr.  Mivart 
diverges  from  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  or  not. 

The  Reviewer  declares  that  Mr.  Darwin  has, 
"  with  needless  opposition,  set  at  nought  the  first 
principles  of  both  philosophy  and  religion "  (p. 
90). 

1  See  the  Tablet  for  March  11,  1871. 


124  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

It  looks,  at  first,  as  if  this  meant,  that  Mr. 
Darwin's  views  being  false,  the  opposition  to 
"  religion  "  which  flows  from  them  must  be  need- 
less. But  I  suspect  this  is  not  the  right  view  of 
the  meaning  of  the  passage,  as  Mr.  Mivart,  from 
whom  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  plainly  draws  so 
much  inspiration,  tells  us  that  "  the  consequences 
which  have  been  drawn  from  evolution,  whether 
exclusively  Darwinian  or  not,  to  the  prejudice  of 
religion,  by  no  means  follow  from  it,  and  are  in 
fact  illegitimate"  (p.  5). 

I  may  assume,  then,  that  the  Quarterly 
Reviewer  and  Mr.  Mivart  admit  that  there  is  no 
necessary  opposition  between  "evolution  whether 
exclusively  Darwinian  or  not,"  and  religion.  But 
then,  what  do  they  mean  by  this  last  much- 
abused  term  ?  On  this  point  the  Quarterly 
Reviewer  is  silent.  Mr.  Mivart,  on  the  contrary, 
is  perfectly  explicit,  and  the  whole  tenor  of  his 
remarks  leaves  no  doubt  that  by  "  religion  "  he 
means  theology  ;  and  by  theology,  that  particular 
variety  of  the  great  Proteus,  which  is  expounded 
by  the  doctors  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and 
held  by  the  members  of  that  religious  community 
to  be  the  sole  form  of  absolute  truth  and  of  saving 
faith. 

According  to  Mr.  Mivart,  the  greatest  and  most 
orthodox  authorities  upon  matters  of  Catholic 
doctrine  agree  in  distinctly  asserting  "  derivative 
creation  "  or  evolution ;  "  and  thus  their  teachings 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  125 

harmonise  with  all  that  modern  science  can 
possibly  require  "  (p.  305). 

I  confess  that  this  bold  assertion  interested  me 
more  than  anything  else  in  Mr.  Mivart's  book. 
What  little  knowledge  I  possessed  of  Catholic 
doctrine,  and  of  the  influence  exerted  by  Catholic 
authority  in  former  times,  had  not  led  me  to 
expect  that  modern  science  was  likely  to  find 
a  warm  welcome  within  the  pale  of  the  greatest 
and  most  consistent  of  theological  organisations. 

And  my  astonishment  reached  its  climax  when 
I  found  Mr.  Mivart  citing  Father  Suarez  as  his 
chief  witness  in  favour  of  the  scientific  freedom 
enjoyed  by  Catholics — the  popular  repute  of  that 
learned  theologian  and  subtle  casuist  not  being  such 
as  to  make  his  works  a  likely  place  of  refuge  for 
liberality  of  thought.  But  in  these  days,  when 
Judas  Iscariot  and  Robespierre,  Henry  VIII. 
and  Catiline,  have  all  been  shown  to  be  men  of 
admirable  virtue,  far  in  advance  of  their  age,  and 
consequently  the  victims  of  vulgar  prejudice,  it 
was  obviously  possible  that  Jesuit  Suarez  might 
be  in  like  case.  And,  spurred  by  Mr.  Mivart's 
unhesitating  declaration,  I  hastened  to  acquaint 
myself  with  such  of  the  works  of  the  great  Catholic 
divine  as  bore  upon  the  question,  hoping,  not 
merely  to  acquaint  myself  with  the  true  teachings 
of  the  infallible  Church,  and  free  myself  of  an 
unjust  prejudice  ;  but,  haply,  to  enable  myself,  at 
a  pinch,  to  put  some  Protestant  bibliolater  to 


126  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

shame,  by  the  bright  example  of  Catholic  freedom 
from  the  trammels  of  verbal  inspiration. 

I  regret  to  say  that  my  anticipations  have  been 
cruelly  disappointed.  But  the  extent  to  which 
my  hopes  have  been  crushed  can  only  be  fully 
appreciated  by  citing,  in  the  first  place,  those 
passages  of  Mr.  Mivart's  work  by  which  they  were 
excited.  In  his  introductory  chapter  I  find  the 
following  passages : — 

"The  prevalence  of  this  theory  [of  evolution] 
need  alarm  no  one,  for  it  is,  without  any  doubt, 
j  perfectly  consistent  with  the  strictest  and  most 
{ orthodox  Christian  l  theology  "  (p.  5). 

"Mr.  Darwin  and  others  may  perhaps  be 
excused  if  they  have  not  devoted  much  time  to 
the  study  of  Christian  philosophy  ;  but  they  have 
no  right  to  assume  or  accept  without  careful  ex- 
amination, as  an  unquestioned  fact,  that  in  that 
philosophy  there  is  a  necessary  antagonism 
between  the  two  ideas  '  creation  '  and  '  evolution,' 
as  applied  to  organic  forms. 

"  It  is  notorious  and  patent  to  all  who  choose  to 
seek,  that  many  distinguished  Christian  thinkers 
have  accepted,  and  do  accept,  both  ideas,  i.e.  both 
'  creation '  and  '  evolution.' 

"  As  much  as  ten  years  ago  an  eminently 
Christian  writer  observed  :  '  The  creationist  theory 
does  not  necessitate  the  perpetual  search  after 

1  It  should  be  observed  that  Mr.  Mivart  employs  the  term 
"Christian"  as  if  it  were  the  equivalent  of  "Catholic." 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  127 

manifestations  of  miraculous  power  and  perpetual 
"catastrophes."  Creation  is  not  a  miraculous 
interference  with  the  laws  of  Nature,  but  the  very 
institution  of  those  laws.  Law  and  regularity, 
not  arbitrary  intervention,  was  the  patristic  ideal 
of  creation.  With  this  notion  they  admitted, 
without  difficulty,  the  most  surprising  origin  of 
living  creatures,  provided  it  took  place  by  law. 
They  held  that  when  God  said,  "  Let  the  waters 
produce,"  "  Let  the  earth  produce,"  He  conferred 
forces  on  the  elements  of  earth  and  water  which 
enabled  them  naturally  to  produce  the  various 
species  of  organic  beings.  This  power,  they 
thought,  remains  attached  to  the  elements 
throughout  all  time.'  The  same  writer  quotes 
St.  Augustin  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  to  the 
effect  that,  '  in  the  institution  of  Nature,  we  do  not 
look  for  miracles,  but  for  the  laws  of  Nature.' 
And,  again,  St.  Basil  speaks  of  the  continued 
operation  of  natural  laws  in  the  production  of  all 
organisms. 

"  So  much  for  the  writers  of  early  and  mediaeval 
times.  As  to  the  present  day,  the  author  can 
confidently  affirm  that  there  are  many  as  well 
versed  in  theology  as  Mr.  Darwin  is  in  his  own 
department  of  natural  knowledge,  who  would  not 
be  disturbed  by  the  thorough  demonstration  of  his 
theory.  Nay,  they  would  not  even  be  in  the  least 
painfully  affected  at  witnessing  the  generation  of 
animals  of  complex  organisation  by  the  skilful 


128  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

artificial  arrangement  of  natural  forces,  and  the 
production,  in  the  future,  of  a  fish  by  means 
analogous  to  those  by  which  we  now  produce 
urea. 

"And  this  because  they  know  that  the  possi- 
bility of  such  phenomena,  though  by  no  means 
actually  foreseen,  has  yet  been  fully  provided  for 
in  the  old  philosophy  centuries  before  Darwin,  or 
even  centuries  before  Bacon,  and  that  their  place  in 
the  system  can  be  at  once  assigned  them  without 
even  disturbing  its  order  or  marring  its  harmony. 

"  Moreover,  the  old  tradition  in  this  respect  has 
never  been  abandoned,  however  much  it  may  have 
been  ignored  or  neglected  by  some  modern  writers. 
In  proof  of  this,  it  may  be  observed  that  perhaps 
no  post-mediaeval  theologian  has  a  wider  reception 
amongst  Christians  throughout  the  world  than 
Suarez,  who  has  a  separate  section  1  in  opposition 
to  those  who  maintain  the  distinct  creation  of  the 
various  kinds— or  substantial  forms — of  organic 
life  "  (pp.  19—21). 

Still  more  distinctly  does  Mr.  Mivart  express 
himself  in  the  same  sense,  in  his  last  chapter, 
entitled  "  Theology  and  Evolution  "  (pp.  302-5). 

"  It  appears,  then,  that  Christian  thinkers  are 
perfectly  free  to  accept  the  general  evolution 
theory.  But  are  there  any  theological  authorities 
to  justify  this  view  of  the  matter  ? 

1  Suarez,  Mctaphysica.  Edition  Vives.  Paris,  1868,  vol.  i. 
Disput.  xv.  §  2. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  J29 

"  Now,  considering  how  extremely  recent  are 
these  biological  speculations,  it  might  hardly  be 
expected  d,  priori  that  writers  of  earlier  ages 
should  have  given  expression  to  doctrines 
harmonising  in  any  degree  with  such  very 
modern  views;  nevertheless,  this  is  certainly 
the  case,  and  it  would  be  easy  to  give  numerous 
examples.  It  will  be  better,  however,  to  cite  one 
or  two  authorities  of  weight.  Perhaps  no  writer 
of  the  earlier  Christian  ages  could  be  quoted  whose 
authority  is  more  generally  recognised  than  that 
of  St.  Augustin.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
medieval  period  for  St.  Thomas  Aquinas :  and 
since  the  movement  of  Luther,  Suarez  may 
be  taken  as  an  authority,  widely  venerated, 
and  one  whose  orthodoxy  has  never  been  ques- 
tioned. 

"  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  for  a  consider- 
able time  even  after  the  last  of  these  writers  no 
one  had  disputed  the  generally  received  belief  as 
to  the  small  age  of  the  world,  or  at  least  of  the 
kinds  of  animals  and  plants  inhabiting  it.  It 
becomes,  therefore,  much  more  striking  if  views 
formed  under  such  a  condition  of  opinion  are 
found  to  harmonise  with  modern  ideas  con- 
cerning '  Creation '  and  organic  Life. 

"  Now  St.  Augustin  insists  in  a  very  remarkable 
manner  on  the  merely  derivative  sense  in  which 
God's  creation  of  organic  forms  is  to  be  under- 
stood ;  that  is,  that  God  created  them  by  conferring 


130  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

on  the  material  world  the  power  to  evolve  them 
under  suitable  conditions." 

Mr.  Mivart  then  cites  certain  passages  from  St. 
Augustin,  St.  Thomas  Aquinas,  and  Cornelius  a 
Lapide,  and  finally  adds : — 

"As  to  Suarez,  it  will  be  enough  to  refer  to  Disp.  xv.  sec.  2, 
No.  9,  p.  508,  t.  i.  edition  Vives,  Paris  ;  also  Nos.  13—15. 
Many  other  references  to  the  same  effect  could  easily  be  given, 
but  these  may  suffice. 

"  It  is  then  evident  that  ancient  and  most  venerable  theo- 
logical authorities  distinctly  assert  derivative  creation,  and 
thus  their  teachings  harmonise  with  all  that  modern  science 
can  possibly  require. " 

It  will  be  observed  that  Mr.  Mivart  refers  solely 
to  Suarez's  fifteenth  Disputation,  though  he  adds, 
"  Many  other  references  to  the  same  effect  could 
easily  be  given."  I  shall  look  anxiously  for  these 
references  in  the  third  edition  of  the  "  Genesis  of 
Species."  For  the  present,  all  I  can  say  is,  that 
I  have  sought  in  vain,  either  in  the  fifteenth 
Disputation,  or  elsewhere,  for  any  passage  in 
Suarez's  writings  which,  in  the  slightest  degree, 
bears  out  Mr.  Mivart's  views  as  to  his  opinions.1 

The  title  of  this  fifteenth  Disputation  is  "  De 
causa  formali  substantiali,"  and  the  second  section 
of  that  Disputation  (to  which  Mr.  Mivart  refers) 
is  headed,  "  Quomodo  possit  forma  substantialis 
fieri  in  materia  et  ex  materia  ?  " 

1  The  edition  of  Suarez's  Disputationes  from  which  the  follow- 
ing citations  are  given,  is  Birckmann's,  in  two  volumes  folio, 
and  is  dated  1630. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  131 

The  problem  which  Suarez  discusses  in  this 
place  may  be  popularly  stated  thus  :  According  to 
the  scholastic  philosophy  every  natural  body  has 
two  components — the  one  its  "  matter  "  (materia 
prima),  the  other  its  "  substantial  form  "  (forma 
substantialis).  Of  these  the  matter  is  everywhere 
the  same,  the  matter  of  one  body  being  indis- 
tinguishable from  the  matter  of  any  other  body. 
That  which  differentiates  any  one  natural  body 
from  all  others  is  its  substantial  form,  which 
inheres  in  the  matter  of  that  body,  as  the  human 
soul  inheres  in  the  matter  of  the  frame  of  man, 
and  is  the  source  of  all  the  activities  and  other 
properties  of  the  body. 

Thus,  says  Suarez,  if  water  is  heated,  and  the 
source  of  heat  is  then  removed,  it  cools  again. 
The  reason  of  this  is  that  there  is  a  certain  "  inti- 
miiis  principium  "  in  the  water,  which  brings  it 
back  to  the  cool  condition  when  the  external 
impediment  to  the  existence  of  that  condition  is 
removed.  This  intimius  principium  is  the  "  sub- 
stantial form  "  of  the  water.  And  the  substantial 
form  of  the  water  is  not  only  the  cause  (radix)  of 
the  coolness  of  the  water,  but  also  of  its  moisture, 
of  its  density,  and  of  all  its  other  properties. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  "  substantial  forms  " 
play  nearly  the  same  part  in  the  scholastic 
philosophy  as  "  forces  "  do  in  modern  science  ;  the 
general  tendency  of  modern  thought  being  to 
conceive  all  bodies  as  resolvable  into  material 


132  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

particles  and  forces,  in  virtue  of  which  last  these 
particles  assume  those  dispositions  and  exercise 
those  powers  which  are  characteristic  of  each 
particular  kind  of  matter. 

But  the  Schoolmen  distinguished  two  kinds  of 
substantial  forms,  the  one  spiritual  and  the  other 
material.  The  former  division  is  represented  by 
the  human  soul,  the  anima  rationalis;  and  they 
affirm  as  a  matter,  not  merely  of  reason,  but  of 
faith,  that  every  human  soul  is  created  out  of 
nothing,  and  by  this  act  of  creation  is  endowed 
with  the  power  of  existing  for  all  eternity,  apart 
from  the  materia  prima  of  which  the  corporeal 
frame  of  man  is  composed.  And  the  anima 
rationalis,  once  united  with  the  materia  prima  of 
the  body,  becomes  its  substantial  form,  and  is  the 
source  of  all  the  powers  and  faculties  of  man — of 
all  the  vital  and  sensitive  phenomena  which  he 
exhibits — just  as  the  substantial  form  of  water  is 
the  source  of  all  its  qualities. 

The  "  material  substantial  forms "  are  those 
which  inform  all  other  natural  bodies  except  that 
of  man ;  and  the  object  of  Suarez  in  the  present 
Disputation,  is  to  show  that  the  axiom  "  ex  nihilo 
nihil  fit,"  though  not  true  of  the  substantial  form 
of  man,  is  true  of  the  substantial  forms  of  all 
other  bodies,  the  endless  mutations  of  which 
constitute  the  ordinary  course  of  nature.  The 
origin  of  the  difficulty  which  he  discusses  is  easily 
comprehensible.  Suppose  a  piece  of  bright  iron 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  133 

to  be  exposed  to  the  air.  The  existence  of  the 
iron  depends  on  the  presence  within  it  of  a  sub- 
stantial form,  which  is  the  cause  of  its  properties, 
e.g.  brightness,  hardness,  weight.  But,  by  degrees, 
the  iron  becomes  converted  into  a  mass  of  rust, 
which  is  dull,  and  soft,  and  light,  and,  in  all  other 
respects,  is  quite  different  from  the  iron.  As,  in 
the  scholastic  view,  this  difference  is  due  to  the 
rust  being  informed  by  a  new  substantial  form, 
the  grave  problem  arises,  how  did  this  new  sub- 
stantial form  come  into  being  ?  Has  it  been 
created  ?  or  has  it  arisen  by  the  power  of  natural 
causation  ?  If  the  former  hypothesis  is  correct, 
then  the  axiom,  " ex  niliilo  nihil fit"  is  false,  even 
in  relation  to  the  ordinary  course  of  nature,  seeing 
that  such  mutations  of  matter  as  imply  the 
continual  origin  of  new  substantial  forms  are 
occurring  every  moment.  But  the  harmonisation 
of  Aristotle  with  theology  was  as  dear  to  the 
Schoolmen,  as  the  smoothing  down  the  differences 
between  Moses  and  science  is  to  our  Broad  Church- 
men, and  they  were  proportionably  unwilling  to 
contradict  one  of  Aristotle's  fundamental  proposi- 
tions. Nor  was  their  objection  to  flying  in  the  face 
of  the  Stagirite  likely  to  be  lessened  by  the  fact 
that  such  flight  landed  them  in  flat  Pantheism. 

So  Father  Suarez  fights  stoutly  for  the  second 
hypothesis ;  and  I  quote  the  principal  part  of  his 
argumentation  as  an  exquisite  specimen  of  that 
speech  which  is  a  "  darkening  of  counsel." 


134  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

"13.  Secundo  de  omnibus  aliis  formis  substantialibus  [sc. 
materialibus]  diccndum  est  non  fieri  proprie  ex  nihilo,  sed  ex 
potentia  prsejacentis  materiae  educi :  ideoque  in  effectione  harum 
formarum  nil  fieri  contra  illud  axioma,  Ex  nihilo  nihil  fit,  si 
recte  intelligatur.  Haec  assertio  sumitur  ex  Aristotele  1.  Phy- 
sicorum  per  totum  et  libro  7.  Metaphyss.  et  ex  aliis  auctoribus, 
quos  statim  referam.  Et  declaratur  breviter,  nam  fieri  ex 
nihilo  duo  dicit,  unum  est  fieri  absolute  et  simpliciter,  aliud  est 
quod  talis  effectio  fit  ex  nihilo.  Primum  proprie  dicitur  de  re 
subsistente,  quia  ejus  est  fieri,  cujus  est  esse  :  id  autem  proprie 
quod  subsistit  et  habet  esse  ;  nam  quod  alteri  adjacet,  potius  est 
quo  aliud  est.  Ex  hac  ergo  parte,  formse  substantiales  niate- 
riales  non  fiunt  ex  nihilo,  quia  proprie  non  fiunt.  Atque  hanc 
rationem  reddit  Divus  Thomas  1  parte,  qusestione  45,  articulo 
8,  et  qusestione  90,  articulo  2,  et  ex  dicendis  magis  explicabitur. 
Sumendo  ergo  ipsum  fieri  in  hac  proprietate  et  rigore,  sic  fieri 
ex  nihilo  est  fieri  secundum  se  totum,  id  est  nulla  sui  parte 
prcesupposita,  ex  quo  fiat.  Et  hac  ratione  res  naturales  dura  de 
novo  fiunt,  non  fiunt  ex  nihilo,  quia  fiunt  ex  prsesupposita 
materia,  ex  qua  componuntur,  et  ita  non  fiunt,  secundum  se 
totse,  sed  secundum  aliquid  sui.  Formae  autem  harum  rerum, 
quamvis  revera  totam  suam  entitatem  de  novo  accipiant,  quam 
antea  non  habebant,  quia  vero  ipsse  non  fiunt,  ut  dictum  est, 
ideo  neque  ex  nihilo  fiunt.  Attamen,  quia  latiori  modo  sumendo 
verbum  illud  fieri  negari  non  potest :  quin  forma  facta  sit,  eo 
modo  quo  mine  est,  et  antea  non  erat,  ut  etiam  probat  ratio 
dubitandi  posita  in  principio  sectionis,  ideo  addendum  est, 
sumpto  fieri  in  hac  amplitudine,  fieri  ex  nihilo  non  tamen 
negare  habitudinem  materialis  causae  intrinsece  componentis  id 
quod  fit,  sed  etiam  habitudinem  causse  materialis  per  se  causantis 
et  sustentantis  formam  quae  fit,  seu  confit.  Diximus  enim  in 
superioribus  materiam  et  esse  causam  compositi  et  formae 
dependentis  ab  ilia  :  ut  res  ergo  dicatur  ex  nihilo  fieri  uterque 
modus  causal  itatis  uegari  debet ;  et  eodem  sensu  accipiendum 
est  illud  axioma,  ut  sit  verum  :  Ex  nihilo  nihil  fit,  scilicet 
virtute  agentis  naturalis  et  finiti  nihil  fieri,  nisi  ex  praesupposito 
Bubjecto  per  se  concurrente,  et  ad  compositum  et  ad  formam,  si 
utrumque  suo  modo  ab  eodem  agente  fiat.  Ex  his  ergo  recto 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  135 

concluditur,  fonnns  substantiales  materiales  non  fieri  ex  nihilo, 
quia  fiunt  ex  materia,  quae  in  suo  genere  per  se  concurrit,  et 
influit  ad  esse,  et  fieri  talium  formarum  ;  quia,  sicut  esse  non 
possunt  nisi  affixae  materiae,  a  qua  sustententur  in  esse  :  ita  nee 
fieri  possunt,  nisi  earum  effectio  et  penetratio  in  eadem  materia 
sustentetur.  Et  haee  est  propria  et  per  se  differentia  inter 
effectionem  ex  nihilo,  et  ex  aliquo,  propter  quam,  ut  infra 
ostendemus,  prior  modus  efficiendi  superat  vim  finitam  natu- 
raliam  agentium,  nou  vero  posterior. 

"14.  Ex  his  etiam  constat,  proprie  de  his  formis  dici  non 
creari,  sed  educi  de  potentia  inateriae. "  l 

If  I  may  venture  to  interpret  these  hard  say- 
ings, Suarez  conceives  that  the  evolution  of 
substantial  forms  in  the  ordinary  course  of  nature, 
is  conditioned  not  only  by  the  existence  of  the 
materia  prima,  but  also  by  a  certain  "  concurrence 
and  influence "  which  that  materia  exerts ;  and 
every  new  substantial  form  being  thus  conditioned, 
and  in  part,  at  any  rate,  caused*,  by  a  pre-existing 
.something,  cannot  be  said  to  be  created  out  of 
nothing. 

But  as  the  whole  tenor  of  the  context  shows, 
Suarez  applies  this  argumentation  merely  to  the 
evolution  of  material  substantial  forms  in  the 
ordinary  course  of  nature.  How  the  substantial 
forms  of  animals  and  plants  primarily  originated, 
is  a  question  to  which,  so  far  as  I  am  able  to 
discover,  he  does  not  so  much  as  allude  in  his 
"  Metaphysical  Disputations."  Nor  was  there  any 
necessity  that  he  should  do  so,  inasmuch  as  he 

1  Suarez,  loc.  cit.  Disput.  xv.  §  ii. 


136  MR   DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

has  devoted  a  separate  treatise  of  considerable 
bulk  to  the  discussion  of  all  the  problems  which 
arise  out  of  the  account  of  the  Creation  which  is 
given  in  the  Book  of  Genesis.  And  it  is  a 
matter  of  wonderment  to  me  that  Mr.  Mivart, 
who  somewhat  sharply  reproves  "  Mr.  Darwin  and 
others  "  for  not  acquainting  themselves  with  the 
true  teachings  of  his  Church,  should  allow 
himself  to  be  indebted  to  a  heretic  like  myself 
for  a  knowledge  of  the  existence  of  that  "  Trac- 
tatus  de  opere  sex  Dierum,"  *  in  which  the  learned 
Father,  of  whom  he  justly  speaks,  as  "  an 
authority  widely  venerated,  and  whose  orthodoxy 
has  never  been  questioned,"  directly  opposes  all 
those  opinions  for  which  Mr.  Mivart  claims  the 
shelter  of  his  authority. 

•  In  the  tenth  and  eleventh  chapters  of  the  first 
book  of  this  treatise,  Suarez  inquires  in  what  sense 
the  word  "  day,"  as  employed  in  the  first  chapter 
of  Genesis,  is  to  be  taken.  He  discusses  the 
views  of  Philo  and  of  Augustin  on  this  question, 
and  rejects  them.  He  suggests  that  the  approval 
of  their  allegorising  interpretations  by  St.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  merely  arose  out  of  St.  Thomas's 
modesty,  and  his  desire  not  to  seem  openly  to 
controvert  St.  Augustin — "  voluisse  Divus  Thomas 


1  Tractatus  de  opere  sex  Dierum,  scu  de  Univcrsi  Crcatione, 
quatenus  sex  diebus  perfecta  csse,  in  libro  Genesis  cap.  i.  refcrtur, 
ft  prccsrrtim  de  productions  hominis  in  slatu  innoceniicc.  Ed. 
Birckmann,  1622. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  137 

pro  sua  modestia  subterfugere  vim  argument! 
potius  quam  aperte  Augustinum  inconstantiae 
arguere." 

Finally,  Suarez  decides  that  the  writer  of 
Genesis  meant  that  the  term  "  day "  should  be 
taken  in  its  natural  sense  ;  and  he  winds  up  the 
discussion  with  the  very  just  and  natural  remark 
that  "it  is  not  probable  that  God,  in  inspiring 
Moses  to  write  a  history  of  the  Creation  which 
was  to  be  believed  by  ordinary  people,  would 
have  made  him  use  language,  the  true  meaning  of 
which  it  is  hard  to  discover,  and  still  harder  to 
believe." l 

And  in  chapter  xii.  3,  Suarez  further  ob- 
serves : — 

"  Ratio  enim  retinendi  veram  significationem  diei  naturalis 
est  ilia  coramunis,  quod  verba  Scripturse  non  sunt  ad  metaphoras 
transferenda,  nisi  vel  necessitas  cogit,  vel  ex  ipsa  scriptura 
constet,  et  maxime  in  historica  narratione  et  ad  instructionem 
fidei  pertinente  :  sed  hsec  ratio  non  minus  cogit  ad  intelligendum 
proprie  dierum  numerum,  quam  diei  qualitatem,  QUIA  NON 

MINUS  UNO  MODO  QUAM  ALIO  DESTRUITUR  S[NCERITAS,  IMO   ET 

VERITAS  HISTORIC.  Secundo  hoc  valde  confirmant  alia  Scripturae 
loca,  in  quibus  hi  sex  dies  tanquam  veri,  et  inter  se  distincti 
commemorantur,  ut  Exod.  20  dicitur,  Sex  diebus  operabis  ct 
facics  omnia  opera  tua,  septiino  autem  die  Sabbatum  Domini  Dei 


1  "  Propterhsec  ergo  sententia  ilia  Augustini  et  propter  nimiam 
obscuritatem  et  subtilitatem  ejus  diih'cilis  creditu  est :  quia 
verisimile  non  est  Deum  iiispirasse  Moysi,  ut  historiam  de 
creatione  mundi  ad  fidem  totius  populi  adeo  necessariam  per 
nomina  dierum  explicaret,  quorum  significatio  vix  inveniri  et 
difiicillime  ab  aliquo  credi  posset."  (Loc.  tit.  Lib.  I.  cap.  xL 
42.) 


138  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

tui  est.  Et  infra  :  Sex  enim  diebus  fecit  Dominus  cesium  et 
terram  et  mare  et  omnia  quce  in  eis  sunt,  et  idem  repetitur  in 
cap.  31.  In  quibus  locis  sermonis  proprietas  colligi  potest  turn 
ex  sequiparatione,  nam  cum  dicitur :  sex  diebus  opcrabw,  pro- 
priissime  intelligitur  :  turn  quia  non  est  verisimile,  potuisse 
populum  intelligere  verba  ilia  in  alio  sensu,  et  e  contrario  in- 
credibile  est,  Deum  in  suis  praeceptis  tradendis  illis  verbis  ad 
populum  fuisse  loquutum,  quibus  deciperetur,  falsum  sensum 
concipiendo,  si  Deus  non  per  sex  veros  dies  opera  sua  fecisset. " 

These  passages  leave  no  doubt  that  this  great 
doctor  of  the  Catholic  Church,  of  unchallenged 
authority  and  unspotted  orthodoxy,  not  only 
declares  it  to  be  Catholic  doctrine  that  the  work 
of  creation  took  place  in  the  space  of  six  natural 
days  ;  but  that  he  warmly  repudiates,  as  inconsist- 
ent with  our  knowledge  of  the  Divine  attributes, 
the  supposition  that  the  language  which  Catholic 
faith  requires  the  believer  to  hold  that  God 
inspired,  was  used  in  any  other  sense  than  that 
which  He  knew  it  would  convey  to  the  minds  of 
those  to  whom  it  was  addressed. 

And  I  think  that  in  this  repudiation  Father 
Suarez  will  have  the  sympathy  of  every  man  of 
common  uprightness,  to  whom  it  is  certainly 
"  incredible  "  that  the  Almighty  should  have  acted 
in  a  manner  which  He  would  esteem  dishonest 
and  base  in  a  man. 

But  the  belief  that  the  universe  was  created  in 
six  natural  days  is  hopelessly  inconsistent  with 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  in  so  far  as  it  applies  to 
the  stars  and  planetary  bodies ;  and  it  can  be 


v  MB.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  139 

made  to  agree  with  a  belief  in  the  evolution  of 
living  beings  only  by  the  supposition  that  the 
plants  and  animals,  which  are  said  to  have  been 
created  on  the  third,  fifth,  and  sixth  days,  were 
merely  the  primordial  forms,  or  rudiments,  out  of 
which  existing  plants  and  animals  have  been 
evolved;  so  that,  on  these  days,  plants  and 
animals  were  not  created  actually,  but  only 
potentially. 

The  latter  view  is  that  held  by  Mr.  Mivart,  who 
follows  St.  Augustin,  and  implies  that  he  has  the 
sanction  of  Suarez.  But,  in  point  of  fact,  the 
latter  great  light  of  orthodoxy  takes  no  small 
pains  to  give  the  most  explicit  and  direct  contra- 
diction to  all  such  imaginations,  as  the  following 
passages  prove.  In  the  first  place,  as  regards 
plants,  Suarez  discusses  the  problem  : — 

"  Quomodo  herba  virens  ct  coctera  vegetabilia  hoc  [tcrtio]  die 
fuerint  producta. 1 

"  Praecipua  enim  difficultas  hie  est,  quam  attingit  Div.  Thomas 
1,  par.  qu.  69,  art.  2,  an  hsec  productio  plantarum  hoc  die  facta 
intelligenda  sit  de  productione  ipsarum  in  proprio  esse  actuali  et 
fonnali  (ut  sic  rem  explicerem)  vel  de  productione.  tantum  in 
semine  et  in  potentia.  Nam  Divus  Augustinus  libro  quinto  Genes, 
ad  liter,  cap.  4  et  5  et  libro  8,  cap.  3,  posteriorein  partem  tradit, 
dicens,  terrain  in  hoc  die  accepisse  virtutem  germinandi  omnia 
vegetabilia  quasi  concepto  omnium  illorum  semine,  non  tamen 
statim  vegetabilia  omnia  produxisse.  Quod  primo  suadet  verbis 
illis  capitis  secundi.  In  die  quo  fecit  Dcus  ccdum  et  tcrram  ct 

1  Loc.  cit.  Lib.  II.  cap.  vii.  et  viii.  1,  32,  35. 


140  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

omne  virgultum  agri  priusguam  gcrminarct.  Quomodo  enim 
potuerant  virgulta  fieri  antequam  terra  germinaret  nisi  quia 
causaliter  prius  et  quasi  in  radice,  seu  in  seniine  facta  sunt,  et 
postea  in  actu  producta  ?  Secundo  confirmari  potest,  quia 
verbum  illud  germinct  terra  optime  exponitur  potestative  ut  sic 
dicam,  id  est  accipiat  terra  vim  germinandi.  Sicut  in  eodem 
capite  dicitur  crcscite  et  multiplicamini.  Tertio  potest  confirmari, 
quiaactualis  productio  vegetabilium  non  tarn  ad  opus  creationis, 
quam  ad  opus  propagationis  pertinet,  quod  postea  factum  est. 
Et  hanc  sententiarn  sequitur  Eucherius  lib.  1,  in  Gen.  cap.  11,  et 
illi  faveat  Glossa,  interli.  Hugo,  et  Lyran.  dum  verbum 
germinet  dicto  modo  exponunt.  NIHILOMINUS  CONTRARIA 

SENTENTIA  TENENDA  EST  :  SCILICET,  PRODUXISSE  DEUM  HOC 
DIE  HERBAM,  ARBORES,  ET  ALIA  VEGETABILIA  ACTU  IN  PROP1UA 

SPECIE  ET  NATTJRA.  Hsec  est  communis  sententia  Patrum. — 
Basil,  homil.  5  ;  Exsemer.  Ambros.  lib.  3  ;  Exaemer.  cap.  8, 
11,  et  16  ;  Chrysost.  homil.  5  in  Gen.  Damascene,  lib.  2  de  Fid. 
cap.  10  ;  Theodor.  Cyrilli.  Bedae,  Glossce  ordinariae  et  aliorum  in 
Gen.  Et  idem  sentit  Divus  Thomas,  supra,  solvens  argumenta 
Augustini,  quamvis  propter  reverentiam  ejus  quasi  problematice 
semper  procedat.  Denique  idem  sentiunt  omnes  qui  in  his 
operibus  veram  successionem  et  temporalem  distinctionem 
agnoscant. " 

Secondly,  with  respect  to  animals,  Suarez  is  no 
less  decided  : — 

"  De  animalium  raiione  carentium  production*;  quinto  et  sexto 

die  facta.1 

"32.  Primo  ergo  nobis  certum  sit  haec  animantia  non  in 
virtnte  tantum  aut  in  semine,  sed  actu,  et  in  seipsis,  facta  fuisse 
his  diebus  in  quibus  facta  narrantur.  Quanquam  Augustinus 
lib.  3,  Gen.  ad  liter,  cap.  5  in  sua  persistens  sententia  contrarium 
sen  tire  videatur." 

But    Suarez    proceeds    to    refute    Augustin's 
1  Loc.  cit.  Lib.  II.  cap.  vii.  et  viii.  1,  32,  35. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  141 

opinions  at  great  length,  and  his  final  judgment 
may  be  gathered  from  the  following  passage  : — 

"  35.  Tertio  dicendura  est,  haec  animalia  omnia  his  diebus 
producta  esse,  IN  PERFECTO  STATU,  IN  SINGULIS  INDIVIDUIS,  SEIT 

8PECIEBUS      SITIS,     JUXTA      TJNIUSCUJUSQUE     NATURAM   .... 

ITAQUE  FUERUNT  OMNIA  CEEATA  INTEGRA  ET  OMNIBUS  suis 

MEMBRIS  PERFECT  A." 

As  regards  the  creation  of  animals  and  plants, 
therefore,  it  is  'clear  that  Suarez,  so  far  from 
"  distinctly  asserting  derivative  creating,"  denies 
it  as  distinctly  and  positively  as  he  can;  that 
he  is  at  much  pains  to  refute  St.  Augustiu's 
opinions ;  that  he  does  not  hesitate  to  regard 
the  faint  acquiescence  of  St.  Thomas  Aquinas  in 
the  views  of  his  brother  saint  as  a  kindly  subter- 
fuge on  the  part  of  Divus  Thomas ;  and  that  he 
affirms  his  own  view  to  be  that  which  is  supported 
by  the  authority  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church. 
So  that,  when  Mr.  Mivart  tells  us  that  Catholic 
theology  is  in  harmony  with  all  that  modern 
science  can  possibly  require  ;  that  "  to  the  general 
theory  of  evolution,  and  to  the  special  Darwinian 
form  of  it,  no  exception  .  .  .  need  be  taken  on 
the  ground  of  orthodoxy;"  and  that  "law  and 
regularity,  not  arbitrary  intervention,  was  the 
Patristic  ideal  of  creation,"  we  have  to  choose 
between  his  dictum,  as  a  theologian,  and  that 
of  a  great  light  of  his  Church,  whom  he  him- 
self declares  to  be  "  widely  venerated  as  an 


142  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

authority,  and  whose  orthodoxy  has  never  been 
questioned." 

But  Mr.  Mivart  does  not  hesitate  to  push  his 
attempt  to  harmonise  science  with  Catholic 
orthodoxy  to  its  utmost  limit  ;  and,  while 
assuming  that  the  soul  of  man  "arises  from 
immediate  and  direct  creation,"  he  supposes  that 
his  body  was  "  formed  at  first  (as  now  in  each 
separate  individual)  by  derivative,  or  secondary 
creation,  through  natural  laws  "  (p.  331). 

This  means,  I  presume,  that  an  animal,  having 
the  corporeal  form  and  bodily  powers  of  man,  may 
have  been  developed  out  of  some  lower  form  of 
life  by  a  process  of  evolution ;  and  that,  after  this 
anthropoid  animal  had  existed  for  a  longer  or 
shorter  time,  God  made  a  soul  by  direct  creation, 
and  put  it  into  the  manlike  body,  which,  hereto- 
fore, had  been  devoid  of  that  anima  rationalis, 
which  is  supposed  to  be  man's  distinctive 
character. 

This  hypothesis  is  incapable  of  either  proof  or 
disproof,  and  therefore  may  be  true  ;  but  if 
Suarez  is  any  authority,  it  is  not  Catholic 
doctrine.  "  Nulla  est  in  homine  forma  educta  de 
potentia  materise," l  is  a  dictum  which  is  absolutely 
inconsistent  with  the  doctrine  of  the  natural 
evolution  of  any  vital  manifestation  of  the  human 
body. 

Moreover,  if  man  existed  as  an  animal  before 
1  Disput.  xv.  §  x.  No.  27. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  143 

he  was  provided  with  a  rational  soul,  he  must,  in 
accordance  with  the  elementary  requirements  of 
the  philosophy  in  which  Mr.  Hivart  delights,  have 
possessed  a  distinct  sensitive  and  vegetative  soul, 
or  souls.  Hence,  when  the  "  breath  of  life  "  was 
breathed  into  the  manlike  animal's  nostrils,  he 
must  have  already  been  a  living  and  feeling 
creature.  But  Suarez  particularly  discusses  this 
point,  and  not  only  rejects  Mr.  Mivart's  view,  but 
adopts  language  of  very  theological  strength 
regarding  it. 

"Possent  prseterea  his  adjungi  arguments  theologica,  ut  est 
illud  quod  sunritur  ex  illis  verbis  Genes.  2.  Formavit  Dcus 
hominem  ex  Kino  temx  et  inspiravit  in  faciem  ejus  spiraculum 
vita:  et  factus  est  homo  in  animam  viventem  :  ille  enim  spiritus, 
quam  Deus  spiravit,  anima  rationalis  fuit,  et  PER  EADEM  FACTUS 

EST  HOMO  VIVENS,  ET  CONSQUENTER,  ETIAM  SENTIENS. 

"  Aliud  est  ex  VIII.  Synodo  General!  quse  est  Constantinopol- 
itana  IV.  can.  11,  qui  sic  habet.  Ajtparct  quosdam  in  tantum 
impictatis  vcnisse  ut  homines  duas  animas  habcrc  doymatiz-';nt  : 
talis  igitur  impictatis  invcniorcs  et  similes  sapientcs,  cum  Vctus 
et  Novum  Tcstamentum  omncsque  Ecclcsian  patres  unam  animam 
raiionalcm  hominem  habere  as-.evercnt,  Sancta  et  universalis 
Sy nodus  anathematized." 1 

Moreover,  if  the  animal  nature  of  man  was  the 
result  of  evolution,  so  must  that  of  woman  have 
been.  But  the  Catholic  doctrine,  according  to 
Suarez,  is  that  woman  was,  in  the  strictest  and 
most  literal  sense  of  the  words,  made  out  of  the 
rib  of  man. 

1  Disput.  xv.  "  De  causa  formal!  substantial!,"  §  x.  No.  24. 


144  MR.  DAHWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

"  Nihilominus  sententia  Catholica  est,  verlia  ilia  Seriptnras 
ease  ad  literam  intelligenda.  Ac  PROINDE  VERB,  AC  REALITER, 
TULISSE  DEUM  COSTAM  ADA.IAM,  ET,  EX  ILLA,  CORPUS  EV.E 

FORMASSE."1 

Nor  is  there  any  escape  in  the  supposition  that 
some  woman  existed  before  Eve,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  Lilith  of  the  rabbis ;  since  Suarez  qualifies 
that  notion,  along  with  some  other  Judaic 
imaginations,  as  simply  "  damnabilis."  2 

After  the  perusal  of  the  "  Tractatus  de  Opere  " 
it  is,  in  fact,  impossible  to  admit  that  Suarez  held 
any  opinion  respecting  the  origin  of  species,  except 
such  as  is  consistent  with  the  strictest  and  most 
literal  interpretation  of  the  words  of  Genesis. 
For  Suarez,  it  is  Catholic  doctrine,  that  the  world 
was  made  in  six  natural  days.  On  the  first  of 
these  days  the  materia  prima  was  made  out  of 
nothing,  to  receive  afterwards  those  "  substantial 
forms "  which  moulded  it  into  the  universe  of 
things ;  on  the  third  day,  the  ancestors  of  all 
living  plants  suddenly  came  into  being,  full-grown, 
perfect,  and  possessed  of  all  the  properties  which 
now  distinguish  them  ;  while,  on  the  fifth  and 
sixth  days,  the  ancestors  of  all  existing  animals 
were  similarly  caused  to  exist  in  their  complete 
and  perfect  state,  by  the  infusion  of  their  appro- 
priate material  substantial  forms  into  the  matter 

1  Traclatus  de  Opcre,  Lib.  III.  "  De  hominis  creatione,"  cap. 
ii.  No.  3. 

2  Ibid.  Lib.  III.  cap.  iv.  Nos.  8  and  9 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  145 

which  had  already  been  created.  Finally,  on  the 
sixth  day,  the  anima  rationulis — that  rational  and 
immortal  substantial  form  which  is  peculiar  to 
man — was  created  out  of  nothing,  and  "  breathed 
into  "  a  mass  of  matter  which,  till  then,  was  mere 
dust  of  the  earth,  and  so  man  arose.  But  the 
species  man  was  represented  by  a  solitary  male 
individual,  until  the  Creator  took  out  one  of  his 
ribs  and  fashioned  it  into  a  female. 

This  is  the  view  of  the  "  Genesis  of  Species " 
held  by  Suarez  to  be  the  only  one  consistent  with 
Catholic  faith  :  it  is  because  he  holds  this  view  to 
be  Catholic  that  he  does  not  hesitate  to  declare 
St.  Augustin  unsound,  and  St.  Thomas  Aquinas 
guilty  of  weakness,  when  the  one  swerved  from 
this  view  and  the  other  tolerated  the  deviation. 
And,  until  responsible  Catholic  authority — say, 
for  example,  the  Archbishop  of  Westminster — 
formally  declares  that  Suarez  was  wrong,  and 
that  Catholic  priests  are  free  to  teach  their  {locks 
that  the  world  was  not  made  in  six  natural  days, 
and  that  plants  and  animals  were  not  created  in 
their  perfect  and  complete  state,  but  have  been 
evolved  by  natural  processes  through  long  ages 
from  certain  germs  in  'which  they  were  potentially 
contained,  I,  for  one,  shall  feel  bound  to  believe 
that  the  doctrines  of  Suarez  are  the  only  ones 
which  are  sanctioned  by  Infallible  Authority,  as 
represented  by  the  Holy  Father  and  the  Catholic 
Church. 


146  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

I  need  hardly  add  that  they  are  as  absolutely 
denied  and  repudiated  by  Scientific  Authority,  as 
represented  by  Reason  and  Fact.  The  question 
whether  the  earth  and  the  immediate  progenitors 
of  its  present  living  population  were  made  in  six 
natural  days  or  not  is  no  longer  one  upon  which 
two  opinions  can  be  held. 

The  fact  that  it  did  not  so  come  into  being 
stands  upon  as  sound  a  basis  as  any  fact  of 
history  whatever.  It  is  not  true  that  existing 
plants  and  animals  came  into  being  within  three 
days  of  the  creation  of  the  earth  out  of  nothing,  for 
it  is  certain  that  innumerable  generations  of  other 
plants  and  animals  lived  upon  the  earth  before 
its  present  population.  And  when,  Sunday  after 
Sunday,  men  who  profess  to  be  our  instructors  in 
righteousness  read  out  the  statement,  "In  six 
days  the  Lord  made  heaven  and  earth,  the  sea, 
and  all  that  in  them  is,"  in  innumerable  churches, 
they  are  either  propagating  what  they  may  easily 
know,  and,  therefore,  are  bound  to  know,  to  be 
falsities  ;  or,  if  they  use  the  words  in  some  non- 
natural  sense,  they  fall  below  the  moral  standard  of 
the  much-abused  Jesuit. 

Thus  far  the  contradiction  between  Catholic 
verity  and  Scientific  verity  is  complete  and 
absolute,  quite  independently  of  the  truth  or  false- 
hood of  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  But,  for  those 
who  hold  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  all  the  Catholic 
verities  about  the  creation  of  living  beings  must 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  147 

be  no  less  false.  For  them,  the  assertion  that  the 
progenitors  of  all  existing  plants  were  made  on  the 
third  day,  of  animals  on  the  fifth  and  sixth  days, 
in  the  forms  they  now  present,  is  simply  false. 
Nor  can  they  admit  that  man  was  made  suddenly 
out  of  the  dust  of  the  earth ;  while  it  would  be  an 
insult  to  ask  an  evolutionist  whether  he  credits  the 
preposterous  fable  respecting  the  fabrication  of 
woman  to  which  Suarez  pins  his  faith.  If  Suarez 
has  rightly  stated  Catholic  doctrine,  then  is 
evolution  utter  heresy.  And  such  I  believe  it  to 
be.  In  addition  to  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  indeed,  one  of  its  greatest  merits  in 
my  eyes,  is  the  fact  that  it  occupies  a  position  of 
complete  and  irreconcilable  antagonism  to  that 
vigorous  and  consistent  enemy  of  the  highest  intel- 
lectual, moral,  and  social  life  of  mankind — the 
Catholic  Church.  No  doubt,  Mr.  Mivart,  like 
other  putters  of  new  wine  into  old  bottles,  is 
actuated  by  motives  which  are  worthy  of  respect, 
and  even  of  sympathy ;  but  his  attempt  has  met 
with  the  fate  which  the  Scripture  prophesies  for 
all  such. 

Catholic  theology,  like  all  theologies  which  are 
based  upon  the  assumption  of  the  truth  of  the 
account  of  the  origin  of  things  given  in  the  Book 
of  Genesis,  being  utterly  irreconcilable  with  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  the  student  of  science,  who  is 
satisfied  that  the  evidence  upon  which  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  rests,  is  incomparably  stronger  and 


148  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

better  than  that  upon  which  the  supposed  author- 
ity of  the  Book  of  Genesis  rests,  will  not  trouble 
himself  further  with  these  theologies,  but  will 
confine  his  attention  to  sijch  arguments  against 
the  view  he  holds  as  are  based  upon  purely 
scientific  data — and  by  scientific  data  I  do  not 
merely  mean  the  truths  of  physical,  mathematical, 
or  logical  science,  but  those  of  moral  and  meta- 
physical science.  For  by  science  I  understand 
all  knowledge  which  rests  upon  evidence  and 
reasoning  of  a  like  character  to  that  which  claims 
our  assent  to  ordinary  scientific  propositions.  And 
if  any  one  is  able  to  make  good  the  assertion  that 
his  theology  rests  upon  valid  evidence  and  sound 
reasoning,  then  it  appears  to  me  that  such  theology 
will  take  its  place  as  a  part  of  science. 

The  present  antagonism  between  theology  and 
science  does  not  arise  from  any  assumption  by  the 
men  of  science  that  all  theology  must  necessarily 
be  excluded  from  science,  but  simply  because 
they  are  unable  to  allow  that  reason  and  morality 
have  two  weights  and  two  measures  ;  and  that  the 
belief  in  a  proposition,  because  authority  tells  you 
it  is  true,  or  because  you  wish  to  believe  it,  which 
is  a  high  crime  and  misdemeanour  when  the  sub- 
ject matter  of  reasoning  is  of  one  kind,  becomes 
under  the  alias  of  "  faith "  the  greatest  of  all 
virtues  when  the  subject  matter  of  reasoning  is  of 
another  kind. 

The  Bishop  of    Brechin   said   well   the   other 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  149 

day  : — "  Liberality  in  religion — I  do  not  mean 
tender  and  generous  allowances  for  the  mis- 
takes of  others — is  only  unfaithfulness  to  truth."  l 
And,  with  the  same  qualification,  I  venture 
to  paraphrase  the  Bishop's  dictum :  "  Eccle- 
siasticism  in  science  is  only  unfaithfulness  to 
truth." 

Elijah's  great  question,  "  Will  you  serve  God  or 
Baal?  Choose  ye,"  is  uttered  audibly  enough  in 
the  ears  of  every  one  of  us  as  we  come  to  man- 
hood. Let  every  man  who  tries  to  answer  it 
seriously  ask  himself  whether  he  can  be  satisfied 
with  the  Baal  of  authority,  and  with  all  the  good 
things  his  worshippers  are  promised  in  this  world 
and  the  next.  If  he  can,  let  him,  if  he  be  so 
inclined,  amuse  himself  with  such  scientific  imple- 
ments as  authority  tells  him  are  safe  and  will  not 
cut  his  fingers ;  but  let  him  not  imagine  he  is,  or 
can  be,  both  a  true  son  of  the  Church  and  a  loyal 
soldier  of  science. 

And,  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  blind  acceptance 
of  authority  appears  to  him  in  its  true  colours,  as 
mere  private  judgment  in  excelsis,  and  if  he  have 
the  courage  to  stand  alone,  face  to  face  with  the 
abyss  of  the  eternal  and  unknowable,  let  him  be 
content,  once  for  all,  not  only  to  renounce  the  good 
things  promised  by  "Infallibility,"  but  even  to 
bear  the  bad  things  which  it  prophesies ;  content 

1  Charge  at  the  Diocesan  Synod  of  Brechin.  Scotsman,  Sept. 
14,  1871. 


150  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

to  follow  reason  and  fact  in  singleness  and  honesty 
of  purpose,  wherever  they  may  lead,  in  the  sure 
faith  that  a  hell  of  honest  men  will,  to  him,  be 
more  endurable  than  a  paradise  full  of  angelic 
shams. 

Mr.  Mivart  asserts  that  "  without  a  belief  in  a 
personal  God  there  is  no  religion  worthy  of  the 
name."  This  is  a  matter  of  opinion.  But  it  may 
be  asserted,  with  less  reason  to  fear  contradiction, 
that  the  worship  of  a  personal  God,  who,  on  Mr. 
Mivart's  hypothesis,  must  have  used  language 
studiously  calculated  to  deceive  His  creatures  and 
worshippers,  is  "  no  religion  worthy  of  the  name." 
"  Incredible  est,  Deum  illis  verbis  ad  populum 
fuisse  locutum  quibus  deciperetur,"  is  a  verdict  in 
which,  for  once,  Jesuit  casuistry  concurs  with  the 
healthy  moral  sense  of  all  mankind. 

Having  happily  got  quit  of  the  theological 
aspect  of  evolution,  the  supporter  of  that  great 
truth  who  turns  to  the  scientific  objections  which 
are  brought  against  it  by  recent  criticism,  finds,  to 
his  relief,  that  the  work  before  him  is  greatly 
lightened  by  the  spontaneous  retreat  of  the  enemy 
from  nine-tenths  of  the  territory  which  he  occu- 
pied ten  years  ago.  Even  the  Quarterly  Reviewer 
not  only  abstains  from  venturing  to  deny  that 
evolution  has  taken  place,  but  he  openly  admits 
that  Mr.  Darwin  has  forced  on  men's  minds  "  a 
recognition  of  the  probability,  if  not  more,  of 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  151 

evolution,  and  of  the  certainty  of  the  action  of 
natural  selection  "  (p.  49). 

I  do  not  quite  see,  myself,  how,  if  the  action  of 
natural  selection  is  certain,  the  occurrence  of  evolu- 
tion is  only  probable;  inasmuch  as  the  development 
of  a  new  species  by  natural  selection  is,  so  far  as 
it  goes,  evolution.  However,  it  is  not  worth  while 
to  quarrel  with  the  precise  terms  of  a  sentence 
which  shows  that  the  high  water  mark  of  intelli- 
gence among  those  most  respectable  of  Britons,  the 
readers  of  the  Quarterly  Review,  has  now  reached 
such  a  level  that  the  next  tide  may  lift  them 
easily  and  pleasantly  on  the  once-dreaded  shore  of 
evolution.  Nor,  having  got  there,  do  they  seem 
likely  to  stop,  until  they  have  reached  the  inmost 
heart  of  that  great  region,  and  accepted  the  ape 
ancestry  of,  at  any  rate,  the  body  of  man.  For 
the  Reviewer  admits  that  Mr.  Darwin  can  be  said 
to  have  established : 

"That  if  the  various  kinds  of  lower  animals  have  been 
evolved  one  from  the  other  by  a  process  of  natural  generation 
or  evolution,  then  it  becomes  highly  probable,  d  priori,  that 
man's  body  has  been  similarly  evolved  ;  but  this,  in  such  a 
case,  becomes  equally  probable  from  the  admitted  fact  that  he  is 
an  animal  at  all "  (p.  65). 

From  the  principles  laid  down  in  the  last  sen- 
tence it  would  follow  that  if  man  were  constructed 
upon  a  plan  as  different  from  that  of  any  other 
animal  as  that  of  a  sea-urchin  is  from  that  of  a 
whale,  it  would  be  "  equally  probable  "  that  he 

39 


152  ME.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

had  been  developed  from  some  other  animal  as  it 
is  now,  when  we  know  that  for  every  bone,  muscle, 
tooth,  and  even  pattern  of  tooth,  in  man,  there  is  a 
corresponding  bone,  muscle,  tooth,  and  pattern  of 
tooth,  in  an  ape.  And  this  shows  one  of  two  things 
— either  that  the  Quarterly  Reviewer's  notions  of 
probability  are  peculiar  to  himself,  or  that  he  has 
such  an  overpowering  faith  in  the  truth  of  evolution 
that  no  extent  of  structural  break  between  one 
animal  and  another  is  sufficient  to  destroy  his  con- 
viction that  evolution  has  taken  place. 

But  this  by  the  way.  The  importance  of  the 
admission  that  there  is  nothing  in  man's  physical 
structure  to  interfere  with  his  having  been  evolved 
from  an  ape  is  not  lessened  because  it  is  grudg- 
ingly made  and  inconsistently  qualified.  And  in- 
stead of  jubilating  over  the  extent  of  the  enemy's 
retreat,  it  will  be  more  worth  while  to  lay  siege  to 
his  last  stronghold — the  position  that  there  is  a 
distinction  in  kind  between  the  mental  faculties 
of  man  and  those  of  brutes,  and  that  in  consequence 
of  this  distinction  in  kind  no  gradual  progress 
from  the  mental  faculties  of  the  one  to  those  of  the 
other  can  have  taken  place. 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer  entrenches  himself 
within  formidable-looking  psychological  outworks, 
and  there  is  no  getting  at  him  without  attacking 
them  one  by  one. 

He  begins  by  "laying  down  the  following  pro- 
position. "  '  Sensation '  is  not  '  thought,'  and  no 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  153 

amount  of  the  former  would  constitute  the  most 
rudimentary  condition  of  the  latter,  though  sen- 
sations supply  the  conditions  for  the  existence  of 
'  thought '  or  '  knowledge'  "  (p.  67). 

This  proposition  is  true,  or  not,  according  to  the 
sense  in  which  the  word  "  thought  "  is  employed. 
Thought  is  not  uncommonly  used  in  a  sense  co- 
extensive with  consciousness,  and,  especially,  with 
those  states  of  consciousness  we  call  memory.  If  I 
recall  the  impression  made  by  a  colour  or  an  odour, 
and  distinctly  remember  blueness  or  muskiness,  I 
may  say  with  perfect  propriety  that  I  "  think  of " 
blue  or  musk ;  and,  so  long  as  the  thought  lasts, 
it  is  simply  a  faint  reproduction  of  the  state  of 
consciousness  to  which  I  gave  the  name  in  question, 
when  it  first  became  known  to  me  as  a  sensation. 

Now,  if  that  faint  reproduction  of  a  sensation, 
which  we  call  the  memory  of  it,  is  properly  termed 
a  thought,  it  seems  to  me  to  be  a  somewhat  forced 
proceeding  to  draw  a  hard  and  fast  line  of  demar- 
cation between  thoughts  and  sensations.  If  sen- 
sations are  not  rudimentary  thoughts,  it  may  be 
said  that  some  thoughts  are  rudimentary  sensations. 
No  amount  of  sound  constitutes  an  echo,  but  for 
all  that  no  one  would  pretend  that  an  echo  is  some- 
thing of  totally  different  nature  from  a  sound. 
Again,  nothing  can  be  looser,  or  more  inaccurate, 
than  the  assertion  that  "  sensations  supply  the 
conditions  for  the  existence  of  thought  or  know- 
ledge." If  this  implies  that  sensations  supply  the 


154  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

conditions  for  the  existence  of  our  memory  of  sen- 
sations or  of  our  thoughts  about  sensations,  it  is  a 
truism  which  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to  state  so 
solemnly.  If  it  implies  that  sensations  supply  any- 
thing else,  it  is  obviously  erroneous.  And  if  it 
means,  as  the  context  would  seem  to  show  it  does, 
that  sensations  are  the  subject-matter  of  all  thought 
or  knowledge,  then  it  is  no  less  contrary  to  fact, 
inasmuch  as  our  emotions,  which  constitute  a  large 
part  of  the  subject-matter  of  thought  or  of  know- 
ledge, are  not  sensations. 

More  eccentric  still  is  the  Quarterly  Reviewer's 
next  piece  of  psychology. 

"Altogether,  we  may  clearly  distinguish  at  least  six  kinds  of 
action  to  which  the  nervous  system  ministers  : — 

"  I.  That  in  which  impressions  received  result  in  appropriate 
movements  without  the  intervention  of  sensation  or  thought,  as 
in  the  cases  of  injury  above  given. — This  is  the  reflex  action  of 
the  nervous  system. 

"  II.  That  in  which  stimuli  from  without  result  in  sensations 
through  the  agency  of  which  their  due  effects  are  wrought  out. 
— Sensation. 

"  III.  That  in  which  impressions  received  result  in  sensations 
which  give  rise  to  the  observation  of  sensible  objects. — Sensible 
perception. 

' '  IV.  That  in  which  sensations  and  perceptions  continue  to 
coalesce,  agglutinate,  and  combine  in  more  or  less  complex 
aggregations,  according  to  the  laws  of  the  association  of  sensible 
perceptions.  — A  ssociation. 

"The  above  four  groups  contain  only  indeliberate  operations, 
consisting,  as  they  do  at  the  best,  but  of  mere  presentative 
sensible  ideas  in  no  way  implying  any  reflective  or  representative 
faculty.  Such  actions  minister  to  and  form  Instinct.  Besides  these, 
we  may  distinguish  two  other  kinds  of  mental  action,  namely  : — 


v  AIR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  155 

"V.  That  in  which  sensations  and  sensible  perceptions  are 
reflected  on  by  thought,  and  recognised  as  our  own,  and  wo 
ourselves  recognised  by  ourselves  as  affected  and  perceiving. — 
Self-consciousness. 

"VI.  That  in  which  we  reflect  upon  our  sensations  or 
perceptions,  and  ask  what  they  are,  and  why  they  are. — Reason. 

"These  two  latter  kinds  of  action  are  deliberate  operations, 
performed,  as  they  are,  by  means  of  representative  ideas  imply- 
ing the  use  of  a  reflective  representative  faculty.  Such  actions 
distinguish  the  intellect  or  rational  faculty.  Now,  we  assert 
that  possession  in  perfection  of  all  the  first  four  ( prescntative) 
kinds  of  action  by  no  means  implies  the  possession  of  the  last 
two  (representative)  kinds.  All  persons,  we  think,  must  admit 
the  truth  of  the  following  proposition  : — 

"  Two  faculties  are  distinct,  not  in  degree  but  in  kind,  if  we 
may  possess  the  one  in  perfection  without  that  fact  implying 
that  we  possess  the  other  also.  Still  more  will  this  be  the  case 
if  the  two  faculties  tend  to  increase  in  an  inverse  ratio.  Yet 
this  is  the  distinction  between  the  instinctive  and  the  intellectual 
parts  of  man's  nature. 

"  As  to  animals,  we  fully  admit  that  they  may  possess  all  the 
first  four  groups  of  actions — that  they  may  have,  so  to  speak, 
mental  images  of  sensible  objects  combined  in  all  degrees  of 
complexity,  as  governed  by  the  laws  of  association.  We  deny 
to  them,  on  the  other  hand,  the  possession  of  the  last  two  kinds 
of  mental  action.  We  deny  them,  that  is,  the  power  of  reflecting 
on  their  own  existences,  or  of  inquiring  into  the  nature  of  objects 
and  their  causes.  We  deny  that  they  know  that  they  know  or 
know  themselves  in  knowing.  In  other  words,  we  deny  them 
reason.  The  possession  of  the  presentative  faculty,  as  above 
explained,  in  no  way  implies  that  of  the  reflective  faculty  ;  nor 
does  any  amount  of  direct  operation  imply  the  power  of  asking 
the  reflective  question  before  mentioned,  as  to  'what'  and 
'why.'"  (Loc.  cit.  pp.  67,  68.) 

Sundry  points  are  worthy  of  notice  in  this 
remarkable  account  of  the  intellectual  powers.  In 
the  first  place  the  Reviewer  ignores  emotion  and 


156  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

volition,  though  they  are  no  inconsiderable  "  kinds 
of  action  to  which  the  nervous  system  ministers," 
and  memory  has  a  place  in  his  classification  only 
by  implication.  Secondly,  we  are  told  that  the 
second  "kind  of  action  to  which  the  nervous 
system  ministers  "  is  "  that  in  which  stimuli  from 
without  result  in  sensations  through  the  agency 
of  which  their  due  effects  are  wrought  out. — 
Sensation."  Does  this  really  mean  that,  in  the 
writer's  opinion,  "sensation"  is  the  "agent"  by 
which  the  "  due  effect "  of  the  stimulus,  which 
gives  rise  to  sensation,  is  "  wrought  out "  ? 
Suppose  somebody  runs  a  pin  into  me.  The 
"  due  effect "  of  that  particular  stimulus  will 
probably  be  threefold ;  namely,  a  sensation  of 
pain,  a  start,  and  an  interjectional  expletive. 
Does  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  really  think  that 
the  "  sensation  "  is  the  "  agent "  by  which  the 
other  two  phenomena  are  wrought  out  ? 

But  these  matters  are  of  little  moment  to 
anyone  but  the  Reviewer  and  those  persons  who 
may  incautiously  take  their  physiology,  or  psycho- 
logy, from  him.  The  really  interesting  point  is 
this,  that  when  he  fully  admits  that  animals 
"  may  possess  all  the  first  four  groups  of  actions," 
he  grants  all  that  is  necessary  for  the  purposes  of 
the  evolutionist.  For  he  hereby  admits  that  in 
animals  "  impressions  received  result  in  sensations 
which  give  rise  to  the  observation  of  sensible 
objects,"  and  that  they  have  what  he  calls 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  157 

"sensible  perception."  Nor  was  it  possible  to 
help  the  admission  ;  for  we  have  as  much  reason 
to  ascribe  to  animals,  as  we  have  to  attribute  to 
our  fellow-men,  the  power,  not  only  of  perceiving 
external  objects  as  external,  and  thus  practically 
recognizing  the  difference  between  the  self  and  the 
not-self;  but  that  of  distinguishing  between  like 
and  unlike,  and  between  simultaneous  and  suc- 
cessive things.  When  a  gamekeeper  goes  out 
coursing  with  a  greyhound  in  leash,  and  a  hare 
crosses  the  field  of  vision,  he  becomes  the  subject 
of  those  states  of  consciousness  we  call  visual 
sensation,  and  that  is  all  he  receives  from  without. 
Sensation,  as  such,  tells  him  nothing  whatever 
about  the  cause  of  these  states  of  consciousness; 
but  the  thinking  faculty  instantly  goes  to  work 
upon  the  raw  material  of  sensation  furnished  to  it 
through  the  eye,  and  gives  rise  to  a  train  of 
thoughts.  First  comes  the  thought  that  there  is 
an  object  at  a  certain  distance  ;  then  arises 
another  thought — the  perception  of  the  likeness 
between  the  states  of  consciousness  awakened  by 
this  object  to  those  presented  by  memory,  as,  on 
some  former  occasion,  called  up  by  a  hare ;  this  is 
succeeded  by  another  thought  of  the  nature  of  an 
emotion — namely,  the  desire  to  possess  the  hare ; 
then  follows  a  longer  or  shorter  train  of  other 
thoughts,  which  end  in  a  volition  and  an  act — the 
loosing  of  the  greyhound  from  the  leash.  These 
several  thoughts  are  the  concomitants  of  a  process 


158  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

which'  goes  on  in  the  nervous  system  of  the  man. 
Unless  the  nerve -elements  of  the  retina,  of  the 
optic  nerve,  of  the  brain,  of  the  spinal  cord,  and 
of  the  nerves  of  the  arms,  went  through  certain 
physical  changes  in  due  order  and  correlation,  the 
various  states  of  consciousness  which  have  been 
enumerated  would  not  make  their  appearance.  So 
that  in  this,  as  in  all  other  intellectual  operations, 
we  have  to  distinguish  two  sets  of  successive 
changes — one  in  the  physical  basis  of  conscious- 
ness, and  the  other  in  consciousness  itself ;  one  set 
which  may,  and  doubtless  will,  in  course  of  time, 
be  followed  through  all  their  complexities  by  the 
anatomist  and  the  physicist,  and  one  of  which  only 
the  man  himself  can  have  immediate  knowledge. 

As  it  is  very  necessai-y  to  keep  up  a  clear 
distinction  between  these  two  processes,  let  the  one 
be  called  neurosis,  and  the  other  psychosis.  When 
the  gamekeeper  was  first  trained  to  his  work 
every  step  in  the  process  of  neurosis  was  accom- 
panied by  a  corresponding  step  in  that  of  psychosis, 
or  nearly  so.  He  was  conscious  of  seeing  some- 
thing, conscious  of  making  sure  it  was  a  hare, 
conscious  of  desiring  to  catch  it,  and  therefore  to 
loose  the  greyhound  at  the  right  time,  conscious  of 
the  acts  by  which  he  let  the  dog  out  of  the  leash. 
But  with  practice,  though  the  various  steps  of  the 
neurosis  remain — for  otherwise  the  impression  on 
the  retina  would  not  result  in  the  loosing  of  the 
dog — the  great  majority  of  the  steps  of  the 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  159 

psychosis  vanish,  and  the  loosing  of  the  dog  follows 
unconsciously,  or  as  we  say,  without  thinking  about 
it,  upon  the  sight  of  the  hare.  No  one  will  deny 
that  the  series  of  acts  which  originally  intervened 
between  the  sensation  and  the  letting  go  of  the 
dog  were,  in  the  strictest  sense,  intellectual  and 
rational  operations.  Do  they  cease  to  be  so  when 
the  man  ceases  to  be  conscious  of  them  ?  That 
depends  upon  what  is  the  essence  and  what, the 
accident  of  those  operations,  which,  taken  to- 
gether, constitute  ratiocination. 

Now  ratiocination  is  resolvable  into  predication, 
and  predication  consists  in  marking,  in  some  way, 
the  existence,  the  co-existence,  the  succession,  the 
likeness  and  unlikeness,  of  things  or  their  ideas. 
Whatever  does  this,  reasons  ;  and  if  a  in^chine  pro- 
duces the  effects  of  reason,  I  see  no  more  ground 
for  denying  to  it  the  reasoning  power,  because  it 
is  unconscious,  than  I  see  for  refusing  to  Mr. 
Babbage's  engine  the  title  of  a  calculating  machine 
on  the  same  grounds. 

Thus  it  seems  to  me  that  a  gamekeeper  reasons, 
whether  he  is  conscious  or  unconscious,  whether 
his  reasoning  is  carried  on  by  neurosis  alone,  or 
whether  it  involves  more  or  less  psychosis.  And 
if  this  is  true  of  the  gamekeeper,  it  is  also  true  of 
the  greyhound.  The  essential  resemblances  in  all 
points  of  structure  and  function,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  studied,  between  the  nervous  system  of  the  man 
and  that  of  the  dog,  leave  no  reasonable  doubt 


160  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

that  the  processes  which  go  on  in  the  one  are  just 
like  those  which  take  place  in  the  other.  In  the 
dog,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  ner.vous 
matter  which  lies  between  the  retina  and  the 
muscles  undergoes  a  series  of  changes,  precisely 
analogous  to  those  which,  in  the  man,  give  rise  to 
sensation,  a  train  of  thought,  and  volition. 

Whether  this  neurosis  is  accompanied  by  such 
psychosis  as  ours  it  is  impossible  to  say ;  but 
those  who  deny  that  the  nervous  changes,  which, 
in  the  dog,  correspond  with  those  which  underlie 
thought  in  a  man,  are  accompanied  by  conscious- 
ness, are  equally  bound  to  maintain  that  those 
nervous  changes  in  the  dog,  which  correspond  with 
those  which  underlie  sensation  in  a  man,  are  also 
unaccompanied  by  consciousness.  In  other  words, 
if  there  is  no  ground  for  believing  that  a  dog  thinks, 
neither  is  there  any  for  believing  that  he  feels. 

As  is  well  known,  Descartes  boldly  faced  this 
dilemma,  and  maintained  that  all  animals  were 
mere  machines  and  entirely  devoid  of  consciousness. 
But  he  did  not  deny,  nor  can  anyone  deny,  that  in 
this  case  they  are  reasoning  machines,  capable  of 
performing  all  those  operations  which  are  per- 
formed by  the  nervous  system  of  man  when  he 
reasons.  For  even  supposing  that  in  man,  and  in 
man  only,  psychosis  is  superadded  to  neurosis — the 
neurosis  which  is  common  to  both  man  and  animal 
gives  their  reasoning  processes  a  fundamental 
unity.  But  Descartes'  position  is  open  to  very 


v  MIL  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  1G1 

serious  objections  if  the  evidence  that  animals  feel 
is  insufficient  to  prove  that  they  really  do  so.  What 
is  the  value  of  the  evidence  which  leads  one  to 
believe  that  one's  fellow-man  feels  ?  The  only 
evidence  in  this  argument  of  analogy  is  the 
similarity  of  his  structure  and  of  his  actions  to 
one's  own.  And  if  that  is  good  enough  to  prove 
that  one's  fellow-man  feels,  surely  it  is  good 
enough  to  prove  that  an  ape  feels.  For  the  differ- 
ences of  structure  and  function  between  men  and 
apes  are  utterly  insufficient  to  warrant  the 
assumption  that  while  men  have  those  states  of 
consciousness  we  call  sensations  apes  have  nothing 
of  the  kind.  Moreover,  we  have  as  good  evidence 
that  apes  are  capable  of  emotion  and  volition  as 
we  have  that  men  other  than  ourselves  are.  But 
if  apes  possess  three  out  of  the  four  kinds  of  states 
of  consciousness  which  we  discover  in  ourselves, 
what  possible  reason  is  there  for  denying  them  the 
fourth  ?  If  they  are  capable  of  sensation,  emotion, 
and  volition,  why  are  they  to  be  denied  thought 
(in  the  sense  of  predication)  ? 

No  answer  has  ever  been  given  to  these 
questions.  And  as  the  law  of  continuity  is  as 
much  opposed,  as  is  the  common  sense  of  man- 
kind, to  the  notion  that  all  animals  are  unconscious 
machines,  it  may  safely  be  assumed  that  no 
sufficient  answer  ever  will  be  given  to  them. 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  con- 
sciousness is  a  function  of  nervous  matter,  when 


162  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

that  nervous  matter  lias  attained  a  certain  degree 
of  organisation,  just  as  we  know  the  other 
"  actions  to  which  the  nervous  system  ministers," 
such  as  reflex  action  and  the  like,  to  be.  As  I 
have  ventured  to  state  my  view  of  the  matter 
elsewhere,  "  our  thoughts  are  the  expression  of 
molecular  changes  in  that  matter  of  life  which  is 
the  source  of  our  other  vital  phenomena." 

Mr.  Wallace  objects  to  this  statement  in  the 
following  terms  : — 

"Not  having  been  able  to  find  any  clue  in  Professor  Huxley's 
writings  to  the  steps  by  which  he  passes  from  those  vital  pheno- 
mena, which  consist  only,  in  their  last  analysis,  of  movements 
by  particles  of  matter,  to  those  other  phenomena  which  we  term 
thought,  sensation,  or  consciousness  ;  but,  knowing  that  so 
positive  an  expression  of  opinion  from  him  will  have  great  weight 
with  many  persons,  I  shall  endeavour  to  show,  with  as  much 
brevity  as  is  compatible  with  clearness,  that  this  theory  is  not 
only  incapable  of  proof,  but  is  also,  as  it  appears  to  me, 
inconsistent  with  accurate  conceptions  of  molecular  physics." 

With  all  respect  for  Mr.  Wallace,  it  appears  to 
me  that  his  remarks  are  entirely  beside  the  ques- 
tion. I  really  know  nothing  whatever,  and  never 
hope  to  know  anything,  of  the  steps  by  which  the 
passage  from  molecular  movement  to  states  of 
consciousness  is  effected ;  and  I  entirely  agree 
with  the  sense  of  the  passage  which  he  quotes 
from  Professor  Tyndall,  apparently  imagining  that 
it  is  in  opposition  to  the  view  I  hold. 

All  that  I  have  to  say  is,  that,  in  my  belief, 
consciousness  and  molecular  action  are  capable  of 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  1G3 

being  expressed  by  one  another,  just  as  heat  and 
mechanical  action  are  capable  of  being  expressed 
in  terms  of  one  another.  Whether  we  shall  ever 
be  able  to  express  consciousness  in  foot-pounds,  or 
not,  is  more  than  I  will  venture  to  say ;  but  that 
there  is  evidence  of  the  existence  of  some  corre- 
lation between  mechanical  motion  and  conscious- 
ness, is  as  plain  as  anything  can  be.  Suppose  the 
poles  of  an  electric  battery  to  be  connected  by 
a  platinum  wire.  A  certain  intensity  of  the 
current  gives  rise  in  the  mind  of  a  bystander  to 
that  state  of  consciousness  we  call  a  "  dull  red 
light " — a  little  greater  intensity  to  another  which 
we  call  a  "  bright  red  light ;  "  increase  the  inten- 
sity, and  the  light  becomes  white ;  and,  finally,  it 
dazzles,  and  a  new  state  of  consciousness  arises, 
which  we  term  pain.  Given  the  same  wire  and 
the  same  nervous  apparatus,  and  the  amount  of 
electric  force  required  to  give  rise  to  these  several 
states  of  conciousness  will  be  the  same,  however 
often  the  experiment  is  repeated.  And  as  the 
electric  force,  the  light  waves,  and  the  nerve- 
vibrations  caused  by  the  impact  of  the  light-waves 
on  the  retina,  are  all  expressions  of  the  molecular 
changes  which  are  taking  place  in  the  elements  of 
the  battery ;  so  consciousness  is,  in  the  same 
sense,  an  expression  of  the  molecular  changes 
which  take  place  in  that  nervous  matter,  which  is 
the  organ  of  consciousness. 

And,   since   this,  and  any  number  of   similar 


164  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

examples  that  may  be  required,  prove  that  one 
form  of  consciousness,  at  any  rate,  is,  in  the 
strictest  sense,  the  expression  of  molecular  change, 
it  really  is  not  worth  while  to  pursue  the  inquiry, 
whether  a  fact  so  easily  established  is  consistent  with 
any  particular  system  of  molecular  physics  or  not. 
Mr.  Wallace,  in  fact,  appears  to  me  to  have 
mixed  up  two  very  distinct  propositions  :  the  one, 
the  indisputable  truth  that  consciousness  is  corre- 
lated with  molecular  changes  in  the  organ  of 
consciousness ;  the  other,  that  the  nature  of  that 
correlation  is  known,  or  can  be  conceived,  which 
is  quite  another  matter.  Mr.  Wallace,  presumably, 
believes  in  that  correlation  of  phenomena  which 
we  call  cause  and  effect  as  firmly  as  I  do.  But  if 
he  has  ever  been  able  to  form  the  faintest  notion 
how  a  cause  gives  rise  to  its  effect,  all  I  can  say  is 
that  I  envy  him.  Take  the  simplest  case  imagin- 
able— suppose  a  ball  in  motion  to  impinge  upon 
another  ball  at  rest.  I  know  very  well,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  that  the  ball  in  motion  will  communicate 
some  of  its  motion  to  the  ball  at  rest,  and  that 
the  motion  of  the  two  balls,  after  collision,  is 
precisely  correlated  with  the  masses  of  both  balls 
and  the  amount  of  motion  of  the  first.  But  how 
does  this  come  about  ?  In  what  manner  can  we 
conceive  that  the  vis  viva  of  the  first  ball  passes 
into  the  second  ?  I  confess  I  can  no  more  form 
any  conception  of  what  happens  in  this  case,  than 
I  can  of  what  takes  place  when  the  motion  of 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  165 

particles  of  my  nervous  matter,  caused  by  the 
impact  of  a  similar  ball  gives  rise  to  the  state  of 
consciousness  I  call  pain.  In  ultimate  analysis 
everything  is  incomprehensible,  and  the  whole 
object  of  science  is  simply  to  reduce  the  funda- 
mental incomprehensibilities  to  the  smallest  possi- 
ble number. 

But  to  return  to  the  Quarterly  Reviewer.  He 
admits  that  animals  have  "  mental  images  of 
sensible  objects,  combined  in  all  degrees  of  com- 
plexity, as  governed  by  the  laws  of  association." 
Presumably,  by  this  confused  and  imperfect  state- 
ment the  Reviewer  means  to  admit  more  than  the 
words  imply.  For  mental  images  of  sensible 
objects,  even  though  "  combined  in  all  degrees  of 
complexity,"  are,  and  can  be,  nothing  more  than 
mental  images  of  sensible  objects.  But  judg- 
ments, emotions,  and  volitions  cannot  by  any 
possibility  be  included  under  the  head  of  "  mental 
images  of  sensible  objects."  If  the  greyhound 
had  no  better  mental  endowment  than  the 
Reviewer  allows  him,  he  might  have  the  "  mental 
image  "  of  the  "  sensible  object  " — the  hare — and 
that  might  be  combined  with  the  mental  images 
of  other  sensible  objects,  to  any  degree  of  com- 
plexity, but  he  would  have  no  power  of  judging 
it  to  be  at  a  certain  distance  from  him  ;  no  power 
of  perceiving  its  similarity  to  his  memory  of  a 
hare ;  and  no  desire  to  get  at  it.  Consequently 
he  would  stand  stock  still,  and  the  noble  art  of 


1G6  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

coursing  would  have  no  existence.  On  the  other 
hand,  as  that  art  is  largely  practised,  it  follows 
that  greyhounds  alone  possess  a  number  of  mental 
powers,  the  existence  of  which,  in  any  animal,  is 
absolutely  denied  by  the  Quarterly  Reviewer. 

Finally,  what  are  the  mental  powers  which  he 
reserves  as  the  especial  prerogative  of  man  ? 
They  are  two.  First,  the  recognition  of  "  our- 
selves by  ourselves  as  affected  and  perceiving. — 
Self-consciousness." 

Secondly.  "  The  reflection  upon  our  sensations 
and  perceptions,  and  asking  what  they  are  and 
why  they  are. — Reason." 

To  the  faculty  defined  in  the  last  sentence,  the 
Reviewer,  without  assigning  the  least  ground  for 
thus  departing  from  both  common  usage  and 
technical  propriety,  applies  the  name  of  reason. 
But  if  man  is  not  to  be  considered  a  reasoning 
being,  unless  he  asks  what  his  sensations  and  per- 
ceptions are,  and  why  they  are,  what  is  a  Hot- 
tentot, or  an  Australian  "  black-fellow  "  ;  or  what 
the  "  swinked  hedger  "  of  an  ordinary  agricultural 
district  ?  Nay,  what  becomes  of  an  average 
country  squire  or  parson  ?  How  many  of  these 
worthy  persons  who,  as  their  wont  is,  read  the 
Quarterly  Review,  would  do  other  than  stand 
agape,  if  you  asked  them  whether  they  had  ever 
reflected  what  their  sensations  and  perceptions 
are  and  why  they  are  ? 

S<>  that  if  the  Reviewer's  new  definition  of  rea- 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  167 

son  be  correct,  the  majority  of  men,  even  among  the 
most  civilised  nations,  are  devoid  of  that  supreme 
characteristic  of  manhood.  And  if  it  be  as  absurd 
as  I  believe  it  to  be,  then,  as  reason  is  certainly  not 
self-consciousness,  and  since  it,  as  certainly,  is  one  of 
the  "  actions  to  which  the  nervous  system  minis- 
ters," we  must,  if  the  Reviewer's  classification  is 
to  be  adapted,  seek  it  among  those  four  faculties 
which  he  allows  animals  to  possess.  And  thus,  for 
the  second  time,  he  really  surrenders,  while  seem- 
ing to  defend,  his  position. 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer,  as  we  have  seen, 
lectures  the  evolutionists  upon  their  want  of  know- 
ledge of  philosophy  altogether.  Mr.  Mivart  is  not 
less  pained  at  Mr.  Darwin's  ignorance  of  moral 
science.  It  is  grievous  to  him  that  Mr.  Darwin 
(and  no%s  autres)  should  not  have  grasped  the 
elementary  distinction  between  material  and  formal 
morality  ;  and  he  lays  down  as  an  axiom,  of  which 
no  tyro  ought  to  be  ignorant,  the  position  that 
"  acts,  unaccompanied  by  mental  acts  of  conscious 
will  directed  towards  the  fulfilment  of  duty,"  are 
"  absolutely  destitute  of  the  most  incipient  degree 
of  real  or  formal  goodness." 

Now  this  may  be  Mr.  Mivart's  opinion,  but  it  is 
a  proposition  which  really  does  not  stand  on  the 
footing  of  an  undisputed  axiom.  Mr.  Mill  denies 
it  in  his  work  on  Utilitarianism.  The  most  in- 
fluential writer  of  a  totally  opposed  school,  Mr. 
Carlyle,  is  never  weary  of  denying  it,  and  upholding 

40 


168  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

the  merit  of  that  virtue  which  is  unconscious; 
nay,  it  is,  to  my  understanding,  extremely  hard  to 
reconcile  Mr.  Mivart's  dictum  with  that  noble  sum- 
mary of  the  whole  duty  of  man — "  Thou  shalt  love 
the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  and  with  all 
thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  strength :  and  thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbour  as  thyself."  According  to  Mr. 
Mivart's  definition,  the  man  who  loves  God  and  his 
neighbour,  and,  out  of  sheer  love  and  affection  for 
both,  does  all  he  can  to  please  them,  is,  neverthe- 
less, destitute  of  a  particle  of  real  goodness. 

And  it  further  happens  that  Mr.  Darwin,  who  is 
charged  by  Mr.  Mivart  with  being  ignorant  of  the 
distinction  between  material  and  formal  goodness, 
discusses  the  very  question  at  issue  in  a  passage 
which  is  well  worth  reading  (vol.  i.  p.  87),  and  also 
comes  to  a  conclusion  opposed  to  Mr.  Mivart's 
axiom.  A  proposition  which  has  been  so  much 
disputed  and  repudiated,  should,  under  no  circum- 
stances, have  been  thus  confidently  assumed  to  be 
true.  For  myself,  I  utterly  reject  it,  inasmuch  as 
the  logical  consequence  of  the  adoption  of  any  such 
principle  is  the  denial  of  all  moral  value  to 
sympathy  and  affection.  According  to  Mr.  Mivart's 
axiom,  the  man  who,  seeing  another  struggling  in 
the  water,  leaps  in  at  the  risk  of  his  own  life  to 
save  him,  does  that  which  is  "  destitute  of  the  most 
incipient  degree  of  real  goodness,"  unless,  as  he 
strips  off  his  coat,  he  says  to  himself,  "  Now,  mind, 
I  am  going  to  do  this  because  it  is  my  duty  and 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  169 

for  no  other  reason ; "  and  the  most  beautiful 
character  to  which  humanity  can  attain,  that  of  the 
man  who  does  good  without  thinking  about  it,  be- 
cause he  loves  justice  and  mercy  and  is  repelled 
by  evil,  has  no  claim  on  our  moral  approbation. 
The  denial  that  a  man  acts  morally  because  he  does 
not  think  whether  he  does  so  or  not,  may  be  put 
upon  the  same  footing  as  the  denial  of  the  title  of 
an  arithmetician  to  the  calculating  boy,  because  he 
did  not  know  how  he  worked  his  sums.  If  man- 
kind ever  generally  accept  and  act  upon  Mr. 
Mivart's  axiom,  they  will  simply  become  a  set  of 
most  unendurable  prigs  ;  but  they  never  have  ac- 
cepted it,  and  I  venture  to  hope  that  evolution  has 
nothing  so  terrible  in  store  for  the  human  race. 

But  if  an  action,  the  motive  of  which  is  nothing 
but  affection  or  sympathy,  may  be  deserving  of 
moral  approbation  and  really  good,  who  that  has 
ever  had  a  dog  of  his  own  will  deny  that  animals 
are  capable  of  such  actions  ?  Mr.  Mivart  indeed 
says : — "  It  may  be  safely  affirmed,  however,  that 
there  is  no  trace  in  brutes  of  any  actions  simulat- 
ing morality  which  are  not  explicable  by  the  fear 
of  punishment,  by  the  hope  of  pleasure,  or  by  per- 
sonal affection  "  (p.  221).  But  it  may  be  affirmed, 
with  equal  truth,  that  there  is  no  trace  in  men  of 
any  actions  which  are  not  traceable  to  the  same 
motives.  If  a  man  does  anything,  he  does  it 
either  because  he  fears  to  be  punished  if  he  does 
not  do  it,  or  because  he  hopes  to  obtain  pleasure 


170  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

by  doing  it,  or  because  he  gratifies  his  affections1 
by  doing  it. 

Assuming  the  position  of  the  absolute  moralists, 
let  it  be  granted  that  there  is  a  perception  of  right 
and  wrong  innate  in  every  man.  This  means, 
simply,  that  when  certain  ideas  are  presented  to 
his  mind,  the  feeling  of  approbation  arises ;  and 
when  certain  others,  the  feeling  of  disapprobation. 
To  do  your  duty  is  to  earn  the  approbation  of  your 
conscience,  or  moral  sense  ;  to  fail  in  your  duty  is 
to  feel  its  disapprobation,  as  we  all  say.  Now,  is 
approbation  a  pleasure  or  a  pain?  Surely  a 
pleasure.  And  is  disapprobation  a  pleasure  or  a 
pain  ?  Surely  a  pain.  Consequently,  all  that  is 
really  meant  by  the  absolute  moralists  is  that  there 
is,  in  the  very  nature  of  man,  something  which 
enables  him  to  be  conscious  of  these  particular 
pleasures  and  pains.  And  when  they  talk  of  immut- 
able and  eternal  principles  of  morality,  the  only  in- 
telligible sense  which  I  can  put  upon  the  words,  is 
that  the  nature  of  man  being  what  it  is,  he  always 
has  been,  and  always  will  be,  capable  of  feeling  these 
particular  pleasures  and  pains.  A  priori,  I  have 
nothing  to  say  against  this  proposition.  Admitting 
its  truth,  I  do  not  see  how  the  moral  faculty  is  on 
a  different  footing  from  any  of  the  other  faculties 
of  man.  If  I  choose  to  say  that  it  is  an  immutable 

1  In  separating  pleasure  and  the  gratification  of  affection,  I 
simply  follow  Mr.  Mivart  without  admitting  the  justice  of  the 
separation. 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  171 

and  eternal  law  of  human  nature  that  "  ginger  is 
hot  in  the  mouth,"  the  assertion  has  as  much 
foundation  of  truth  as  the  other,  though  I  think 
it  would  be  expressed  in  needlessly  pompous 
language.  I  must  confess  that  I  have  never  been 
able  to  understand  why  there  should  be  such  a 
bitter  quarrel  between  the  intuitionists  and  the 
utilitarians.  The  intuitionist  is,  after  all,  only  a 
utilitarian  who  believes  that  a  particular  class  of 
pleasures  and  pains  has  an  especial  importance,  by 
reason  of  its  foundation  in  the  nature  of  man,  and 
its  inseparable  connection  with  his  very  existence 
as  a  thinking  being.  And  as  regards  the  motive 
of  personal  affection  :  Love,  as  Spinoza  profoundly 
says,  is  the  association  of  pleasure  with  that  which 
is  loved.1  Or,  to  put  it  to  the  common  sense  of 
mankind,  is  the  gratification  of  affection  a  pleasure 
or  a  pain  ?  Surely  a  pleasure.  So  that  whether 
the  motive  which  leads  us  to  perform  an  action 
is  the  love  of  our  neighbour,  or  the  love  of  God,  it 
is  undeniable  that  pleasure  enters  into  that  motive. 
Thus  much  in  reply  to  Mr.  Mivart's  arguments. 
I  cannot  but  think  that  it  is  to  be  regretted  that 
he  ekes  them  out  by  ascribing  to  the  doctrines  of 
the  philosophers  with  whom  he  does  not  agree, 
logical  consequences  which  have  been  over  and 
over  again  proved  not  to  flow  from  them  :  and  when 
reason  fails  him,  tries  the  effect  of  an  injurious 

1  "  Nempe,  Amor  nihil  aliud  est,  quam  Lsetitia,  concomitante 
ideacausBeexternae."— Ethices,  III.  xiii. 


172  ME.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

nickname.  According  to  the  views  of  Mr.  Spencer, 
Mr.  Mill,  and  Mr.  Darwin,  Mr.  Mivart  tells 
us,  "  virtue  is  a  mere  kind  of  retrieving : "  and, 
that  we  may  not  miss  the  point  of  the  joke,  he 
puts  it  in  italics.  But  what  if  it  is  ?  Does  that 
make  it  less  virtue  ?  Suppose  I  say  that  sculp- 
ture is  a  "  mere  way "  of  stone-cutting,  and 
painting  a  "  mere  way  "  of  daubing  canvas,  and 
music  a  "  mere  way "  of  making  a  noise,  the 
statements  are  quite  true ;  but  they  only  show 
that  I  see  no  other  method  of  depreciating  some 
of  the  noblest  aspects  of  humanity  than  that  of 
using  language  in  an  inadequate  and  misleading 
sense  about  them.  And  the  peculiar  inappro- 
priateness  of  this  particular  nickname  to  the  views 
in  question,  arises  from  the  circumstance  which 
Mr.  Mivart  would  doubtless  have  recollected,  if  his 
wish  to  ridicule  had  not  for  the  moment  obscured 
his  judgment — that  whether  the  law  of  evolution 
applies  to  man  or  not,  that  of  hereditary  transmis- 
sion certainly  does.  Mr.  Mivart  will  hardly  deny 
that  a  man  owes  a  large  share  of  the  moral 
tendencies  which  he  exhibits  to  his  ancestors  ;  and 
the  man  who  inherits  a  desire  to  steal  from  a 
kleptomaniac,  or  a  tendency  to  benevolence  from  a 
Howard,  is,  so  far  as  he  illustrates  hereditary 
transmission,  comparable  to  the  dog  who  inherits 
the  desire  to  fetch  a  duck  out  of  the  water  from 
his  retrieving  sire.  So  that,  evolution,  or  no 
evolution,  moral  qualities  are  comparable  to  a 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  173 

"kind  of  retrieving;"  though  the  comparison,  if 
meant  for  the  purposes  of  casting  obloquy  on 
evolution,  does  not  say  much  for  the  fairness  of 
those  who  make  it. 

The  Quarterly  Eeviewer  and  Mr.  Mivart  base 
their  objections  to  the  evolution  of  the  mental  facul- 
ties of  man  from  those  of  some  lower  animal  form 
upon  what  they  maintain  to  be  a  difference  in  kind 
between  the  mental  and  moral  faculties  of  men  and 
brutes ;  and  I  have  endeavoured  to  show,  by  exposing 
the  utter  unsoundness  of  their  philosophical  basis, 
that  these  objections  are  devoid  of  importance. 

The  objections  which  Mr.  -Wallace  brings  for- 
ward to  the  doctrine  of  the  evolution  of  the  mental 
faculties  of  man  from  those  of  brutes  by  natural 
causes,  are  of  a  different  order,  and  require 
separate  consideration. 

If  I  understand  him  rightly,  he  by  no  means 
doubts  that  both  the  bodily  and  the  mental  facul- 
ties of  man  have  been  evolved  from  those  of 
some  lower  animal ;  but  he  is  of  opinion  that 
some  agency  beyond  that  which  has  been  con- 
cerned in  the  evolution  of  ordinary  animals  has 
been  operative  in  the  case  of  man.  "  A  superior 
intelligence  has  guided  the  development  of  man 
in  a  definite  direction  and  for  a  special  purpose, 
just  as  man  guides  the  development  of  many 
animal  and  vegetable  forms."  l  I  understand  this 

1  "The  Limits  of  Natural  Selection  as  applied  to  Man"  (loc. 
ctt.  p.  359). 


174  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

to  mean  that,  just  as  the  rock-pigeon  has  been 
produced  by  natural  causes,  while  the  evolution  of 
the  tumbler  from  the  blue  rock  has  required  the 
special  intervention  of  the  intelligence  of  man,  so 
some  anthropoid  form  may  have  been  evolved  by 
variation  and  natural  selection ;  but  it  could  never 
have  given  rise  to  man,  unless  some  superior  intel- 
ligence had  played  the  part  of  the  pigeon-fancier. 
According  to  Mr.  Wallace,  "  whether  we  com- 
pare the  savage  with  the  higher  developments  of 
man,  or  with  the  brutes  around  him,  we  are  alike 
driven  to  the  conclusion,  that,  in  his  large  and 
well-developed  brain,  he  possesses  an  organ  quite 
disproportioned  to  his  requirements"  (p.  343); 
and  he  asks,  "  What  is  there  in  the  life  of  the 
savage  but  the  satisfying  of  the  cravings  of  ap- 
petite in  the  simplest  and  easiest  way  ?  What 
thoughts,  idea,  or  actions  are  there  that  raise  him 
many  grades  above  the  elephant  or  the  ape  ? " 
(p.  342.)  I  answer  Mr.  Wallace  by  citing  a  re- 
markable passage  which  occurs  in  his  instructive 
paper  on  "  Instinct  in  Man  and  Animals." 

"Savages  make  long  journeys  in  many  directions,  and,  their 
whole  faculties  being  directed  to  the  subject,  they  gain  a  wide 
and  accurate  knowledge  of  the  topography,  not  only  of  their 
own  district,  but  of  all  the  regions  round  about.  Every  one 
who  has  travelled  in  a  new  direction  communicates  his  know- 
ledge to  those  who  have  travelled  less,  and  descriptions  of  routes 
and  localities,  and  minute  incidents  of  travel,  form  one  of  the 
main  staples  of  conversation  around  the  evening  fire.  Every 
wanderer  or  captive  from  another  tribe  adds  to  the  store  of 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  175 

information,  and,  as  the  very  existence  of  individuals  and  of 
whole  families  and  tribes  depends  upon  the  completeness  of  this 
knowledge,  all  the  acute  perceptive  faculties  of  the  adult  savage 
are  directed  to  acquiring  and  perfecting  it.  The  good  hunter  or 
warrior  thus  comes  to  know  the  bearing  of  every  hill  and  moun- 
tain range,  the  directions  and  junctions  of  all  the  streams,  the 
situation  of  each  tract  characterised  by  peculiar  vegetation,  not 
only  within  the  area  he  has  himself  traversed,  but  perhaps  for 
a  hundred  miles  around  it.  His  acute  observation  enables  him 
to  detect  the  slightest  undulations  of  the  surface,  the  various 
changes  of  subsoil  and  alterations  in  the  character  of  the  vegeta- 
tion that  would  be  quite  imperceptible  to  a  stranger.  His  eye  is 
always  open  to  the  direction  in  which  he  is  going  ;  the  mossy 
side  of  trees,  the  presence  of  certain  plants  under  the  shade  of 
rocks,  the  morning  and  evening  flight  of  birds,  are  to  him 
indications  of  direction  almost  as  sure  as  the  sun  in  the  heavens  " 
(pp.  207,  208). 

I  have  seen  enough  of  savages  to  be  able  to 
declare  that  nothing  can  be  more  admirable  than 
this  description  of  what  a  savage  has  to  learn. 
But  it  is  incomplete.  Add  to  all  this  the  know- 
ledge which  a  savage  is  obliged  to  gain  of  the 
properties  of  plants,  of  the  characters  and  habits 
of  animals,  and  of  the  minute  indications  by  which 
their  course  is  discoverable  :  consider  that  even  an 
Australian  can  make  excellent  baskets  and  nets, 
and  neatly  fitted  and  beautifully  balanced  spears ; 
that  he  learns  to  use  these  so  as  to  be  able  to 
transfix  a  quartern  loaf  at  sixty  yards ;  and  that 
very  often,  as  in  the  case  of  the  American  Indians, 
the  language  of  a  savage  exhibits  complexities 
which  a  well-trained  European  finds  it  difficult  to 
master  :  consider  that  every  time  a  savage  tracks 


176  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

his  game  he  employs  a  minuteness  of  observation, 
and  an  accuracy  of  inductive  and  deductive  reason- 
ing which,  applied  to  other  matters,  would  assure 
some  reputation  to  a  man  of  science,  and  I  think 
we  need  ask  no  further  why  he  possesses  such  a 
fair  supply  of  brains.  In  complexity  and  difficulty, 
I  should  say  that  the  intellectual  labour  of  a  "  good 
hunter  or  warrior  "  considerably  exceeds  that  of 
an  ordinary  Englishman.  The  Civil  Service  Ex- 
aminers are  held  in  great  terror  by  young  English- 
men ;  but  even  their  ferocity  never  tempted  them 
to  require  a  candidate  to  possess  such  a  knowledge 
of  a  parish  as  Mr.  Wallace  justly  points  out 
savages  may  possess  of  an  area  a  hundred  miles 
or  more  in  diameter. 

But  suppose,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  that  a 
savage  has  more  brains  than  seems  proportioned 
to  his  wants,  all  that  can  be  said  is  that  the  objec- 
tion to  natural  selection,  if  it  be  one,  applies  quite 
as  strongly  to  the  lower  animals.  The  brain  of  a 
porpoise  is  quite  wonderful  for  its  mass,  and  for  the 
development  of  the  cerebral  convolutions.  And 
yet  since  we  have  ceased  to  credit  the  story  of 
Arion,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  porpoises  are  much 
troubled  with  intellect :  and  still  more  difficult  is 
it  to  imagine  that  their  big  brains  are  only  a  pre- 
paration for  the  advent  of  some  accomplished 
cetacean  of  the  future.  Surely,  again,  a  wolf  must 
have  too  much  brains,  or  else  how  is  it  that  a  dog 
with  only  the  same  quantity  and  form  of  brain  is 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  177 

able  to  develop  such  singular  intelligence  ?  The 
wolf  stands  to  the  dog  in  the  same  relation  as  the 
savage  to  the  man ;  and,  therefore,  if  Mr.  Wallace's 
doctrine  holds  good,  a  higher  power  must  have 
superintended  the  breeding  up  of  wolves  from 
some  inferior  stock,  in  order  to  prepare  them  to 
become  dogs. 

Mr.  Wallace  further  maintains  that  the  origin 
of  some  of  man's  mental  faculties  by  the  preserva- 
tion of  useful  variations  is  not  possible.  Such, 
for  example,  are  "  the  capacity  to  form  ideal  con- 
ceptions of  space  and  time,  of  eternity  and  infin- 
ity; the  capacity  for  intense  artistic  feelings  of 
pleasure  in  form,  colour,  and  composition  ;  and  for 
those  abstract  notions  of  form  and  number  which 
render  geometry  and  arithmetic  possible."  "  How," 
he  asks,  "  were  all  or  any  of  these  faculties  first 
developed,  when  they  could  have  been  of  no  pos- 
sible use  to  man  in  his  early  stages  of  barbarism  ?  " 

Surely  the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek.  The 
lowest  savages  are  as  devoid  of  any  such  concep- 
tions as  the  brutes  themselves.  What  sort  of 
conceptions  of  space  and  time,  of  form  and  num- 
ber, can  be  possessed  by  a  savage  who  has  not  got 
so  far  as  to  be  able  to  count  beyond  five  or  six,  who 
does  not  know  how  to  draw  a  triangle  or  a  circle, 
and  has  not  the  remotest  notion  of  separating  the 
particular  quality  we  call  form,  from  the  other 
qualities  of  bodies  ?  None  of  these  capacities  are 
exhibited  by  men,  unless  they  form  part  of  a 


178  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

tolerably  advanced  society.  And,  in  such  a  society, 
there  are  abundant  conditions  by  which  a  selective 
influence  is  exerted  in  favour  of  those  persons  who 
exhibit  an  approximation  towards  the  possession 
of  these  capacities. 

The  savage  who  can  amuse  his  fellows  by  telling 
a  good  story  over  the  nightly  fire,  is  held  by  them 
in  esteem  and  rewarded,  in  one  way  or  another, 
for  so  doing — in  other  words,  it  is  an  advantage  to 
him  to  possess  this  power.  He  who  can  carve  a 
paddle,  or  the  figure-head  of  a  canoe  better, 
similarly  profits  beyond  his  duller  neighbour.  He 
who  counts  a  little  better  than  others,  gets  most 
yams  when  barter  is  going  on,  and  forms  the 
shrewdest  estimate  of  the  numbers  of  an  opposing 
tribe.  The  experience  of  daily  life  shows  that  the 
conditions  of  our  present  social  existence  exercise 
the  most  extraordinarily  powerful  selective  influence 
in  favour  of  novelists,  artists,  and  strong  intellects 
of  all  kinds  ;  and  it  seems  unquestionable  that  all 
forms  of  social  existence  must  have  had  the  same 
tendency,  if  we  consider  the  indisputable  facts  that 
even  animals  possess  the  power  of  distinguishing 
form  and  number,  and  that  they  are  capable  of 
deriving  pleasure  from  particular  forms  and 
sounds.  If  we  admit,  as  Mr.  Wallace  does,  that 
the  lowest  savages  are  not  raised  "  many  grades 
above  the  elephant  and  the  ape ; "  and  if  we 
further  admit,  as  I  contend  must  be  admitted,  that 
the  conditions  of  social  life  tend,  powerfully,  to 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  179 

give  an  advantage  to  those  individuals  who 
vary  in  the  direction  of  intellectual  or  aesthetic 
excellence,  what  is  there  to  interfere  with  the 
belief  that  these  higher  faculties,  like  the  rest,  owe 
their  development  to  natural  selection  ? 

Finally,  with  respect  to  the  development  of  the 
moral  sense  out  of  the  simple  feelings  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  liking  and  disliking,  with  which  the 
lower  animals  are  provided,  I  can  find  nothing  in 
Mr.  Wallace's  reasonings  which  has  not  already 
been  met  by  Mr.  Mill,  Mr.  Spencer,  or  Mr. 
Darwin. 

I  do  not  propose  to  follow  the  Quarterly 
Reviewer  and  Mr.  Mivart  through  the  long  string 
of  objections  in  matters  of  detail  which  they 
bring  against  Mr.  Darwin's  views.  Every  one  who 
has  considered  the  matter  carefully  will  be  able  to 
ferret  out  as  many  more  "  difficulties  " ;  but  he 
will  also,  I  believe,  fail  as  completely  as  they 
appear  to  me  to  have  done,  in  bringing  forward 
any  fact  which  is  really  contradictory  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  views.  Occasionally,  too,  their  objections 
and  criticisms  are  based  upon  errors  of  their  own. 
As,  for  example,  when  Mr.  Mivart  and  the 
Quarterly  Reviewer  insist  upon  the  resemblances 
between  the  eyes  of  Cephalopoda  and  Vertebrata, 
quite  forgetting  that  there  are  striking  and  alto- 
gether fundamental  differences  between  them  ;  or 
when  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  corrects  Mr.  Darwin 


180  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

for  saying  that  the  gibbons,  "  without  having  been 
taught,  can  walk  or  run  upright  with  tolerable 
quickness,  though  they  move  awkwardly,  and  much 
less  securely  than  man."  The  Quarterly  Reviewer 
says,  "  This  is  a  little  misleading,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
not  stated  that  this  upright  progression  is  effected 
by  placing  the  enormously  long  arms  behind  the 
head,  or  holding  them  out  backwards  as  a  balance 
in  progression." 

Now,  before  carping  at  a  small  statement  like 
this,  the  Quarterly  Reviewer  should  have  made 
sure  that  he  was  quite  right.  But  he  happens  to 
be  quite  wrong.  I  suspect  he  got  his  notion  of 
the  manner  in  which  a  gibbon  walks  from  a  citation 
in  "  Man's  Place  in  Nature."  But  at  that  time  I 
had  not  seen  a  gibbon  walk.  Since  then  I  have, 
and  I  can  testify  that  nothing  can  be  more  precise 
than  Mr.  Darwin's  statement.  The  gibbon  I  saw 
walked  without  either  putting  his  arms  behind 
his  head  or  holding  them  out  backwards.  All  he 
did  was  to  touch  the  ground  with  the  outstretched 
fingers  of  his  long  arms  now  and  then,  just  as  one 
sees  a  man  who  carries  a  stick,  but  does  not  need 
one,  touch  the  ground  with  it  as  he  walks  along. 

Again,  a  large  number  of  the  objections  brought 
forward  by  Mr.  Mivart  and  the  Quarterly  Reviewer 
apply  to  evolution  in  general,  quite  as  much  as  to 
the  particular  form  of  that  doctrine  advocated  by 
Mr.  Darwin  ;  or,  to  their  notions  of  Mr.  Darwin's 
views  and  not  to  what  they  really  are.  An  excel- 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  181 

lent  example  of  this  class  of  difficulties  is  to  be 
found  in  Mr.  Mivart's  chapter  on  "  Independent 
Similarities  of  Structure."  Mr.  Mivart  says  that 
these  cannot  be  explained  by  an  "  absolute  and 
pure  Darwinian,"  but  "  that  an  innate  power  and 
evolutionary  law,  aided  by  the  corrective  action 
of  natural  selection,  should  have  furnished  like 
needs  with  like  aids,  is  not  at  all  improbable  " 
(p.  82). 

I  do  not  exactly  know  what  Mr.  Mivart  means 
by  an  "  absolute  and  pure  Darwinian ; "  indeed 
Mr.  Mivart  makes  that  creature  hold  so  many 
singular  opinions  that  I  doubt  if  I  can  ever  have 
seen  one  alive.  But  I  find  nothing  in  his 
statement  of  the  view  which  he  imagines  to  be 
originated  by  himself,  which  is  really  inconsistent 
with  what  I  understand  to  be  Mr.  Darwin's  views. 

I  apprehend  that  the  foundation  of  the  theory 
of  natural  selection  is  the  fact  that  living  bodies 
tend  incessantly  to  vary.  This  variation  is  neither 
indefinite,  nor  fortuitous,  nor  does  it  take  place  in 
all  directions,  in  the  strict  sense  of  these  words. 

Accurately  speaking,  it  is  not  indefinite,  nor 
does  it  take  place  in  all  directions,  because  it  is 
limited  by  the  general  characters  of  the  type  to 
which  the  organism  exhibiting  the  variation 
belongs.  A  whale  does  not  tend  to  vary  in  the 
direction  of  producing  feathers,  nor  a  bird  in  the 
direction  of  developing  whalebone.  In  popular 
language  there  is  no  harm  in  saying  that  the 


182  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

waves  which  break  upon  the  sea-shore  are  inde- 
finite, fortuitous,  and  break  in  all  directions.  In 
scientific  language,  on  the  contrary,  such  a  state- 
ment would  be  a  gross  error,  inasmuch  as  every 
particle  of  foam  is  the  result  of  perfectly  definite 
forces,  operating  according  to  no  less  definite  laws. 
In  like  manner,  every  variation  of  a  living  form, 
however  minute,  however  apparently  accidental,  is 
inconceivable  except  as  the  expression  of  the 
operation  of  molecular  forces  or  "  powers  "  resident 
within  the  organism.  And,  as  these  forces  certainly 
operate  according  to  definite  laws,  their  general 
result  is,  doubtless,  in  accordance  with  some  general 
law  which  subsumes  them  all.  And  there  appears 
to  be  no  objection  to  call  this  an  "  evolutionary 
law."  But  nobody  is  the  wiser  for  doing  so,  or  has 
thereby  contributed,  in  the  least  degree,  to  the 
advance  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  the  great 
need  of  which  is  a  theory  of  variation. 

When  Mr.  Mivart  tells  us  that  his  "aim  has 
been  to  support  the  doctrine  that  these  species 
have  been  evolved  by  ordinary  natural  laws  (for 
the  most  part  unknown),  aided  by  the  subordinate 
action  of '  natural  selection '  "  (pp.  332-3),  he  seems 
to  be  of  opinion  that  his  enterprise  has  the  merit 
of  novelty.  All  I  can  say  is  that  I  have  never  had 
the  slightest  notion  that  Mr.  Darwin's  aim  is  in 
any  way  different  from  this.  If  I  affirm  that 
"  species  have  been  evolved  by  variation l  (a  natural 
1  Including  under  this  head  hereditary  transmission. 


v  ME.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  183 

process,  the  laws  of  which  are  for  the  most  part 
unknown),  aided  by  the  subordinate  action  of 
natural  selection,"  it  seems  to  me  that  I  enunciate 
a  proposition  which  constitutes  the  very  pith  and 
marrow  of  the  first  edition  of  the  "  Origin  of 
Species."  And  what  the  evolutionist  stands  in 
need  of  just  now,  is  not  an  iteration  of  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  Darwinism,  but  some  light 
upon  the  questions,  What  are  the  limits  of  varia- 
tion ?  and,  If  a  variety  has  arisen,  can  that  variety 
be  perpetuated,  or  even  intensified,  when  selective 
conditions  are  indifferent,  or  perhaps  unfavourable 
to  its  existence  ?  I  cannot  find  that  Mr.  Darwin 
has  ever  been  very  dogmatic  in  answering  these 
questions.  Formerly,  he  seems  to  have  inclined 
to  reply  to  them  in  the  negative,  while  now  his 
inclination  is  the  other  way.  Leaving  aside  those 
broad  questions  of  theology,  philosophy,  and 
ethics,  by  the  discussion  of  which  neither  the 
Quarterly  Reviewer  nor  Mr.  Mivart  can  be  said  to 
have  damaged  Darwinism — whatever  else  they 
have  injured — this  is  what  their  criticisms  come 
to.  They  confound  a  struggle  for  some  rifle-pits 
with  an  assault  on  the  fortress. 

In  some  respects,  finally,  I  can  only  characterise 
the  Quarterly  Reviewer's  treatment  of  Mr.  Darwin 
as  alike  unjust  and  unbecoming.  Language  of 
this  strength  requires  justification,  and  on  that 
ground  I  add  the  remarks  which  follow. 

The  Quarterly  Reviewer  opens  his  essay  by  a 

41 


184  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

careful  enumeration  of  all  those  points  upon  which, 
during  the  course  of  thirteen  years  of  incessant 
labour,  Mr.  Darwin  has  modified  his  opinions.  It 
has  often  and  justly  been  remarked,  that  what 
strikes  a  candid  student  of  Mr.  Darwin's  works  is 
not  so  much  his  industry,  his  knowledge,  or  even 
the  surprising  fertility  of  his  inventive  genius  ; 
but  that  unswerving  truthfulness  and  honesty 
which  never  permit  him  to  hide  a  weak  place,  or 
gloss  over  a  difficulty,  but  lead  him,  on  all  occa- 
sions, to  point  out  the  weak  places  in  his  own 
armour,  and  even  sometimes,  it  appears  to  me,  to 
make  admissions  against  himself  which  are  quite 
unnecessary.  A  critic  who  desires  to  attack  Mr. 
Darwin  has  only  to  read  his  works  with  a  desire  to 
observe,  not  their  merits,  but  their  defects,  and  he 
will  find,  ready  to  hand,  more  adverse  suggestions 
than  are  likely  ever  to  have  suggested  themselves 
to  his  own  sharpness,  without  Mr.  Darwin's  self- 
denying  aid. 

Now  this  quality  of  scientific  candour  is  not  so 
common  that  it  needs  to  be  discouraged ;  and  it 
appears  to  me  to  deserve  other  treatment  than 
that  adopted  by  the  Quarterly  Reviewer,  who  deals 
with  Mr.  Darwin  as.  an  Old  Bailey  barrister  deals 
with  a  man  against  whom  he  wishes  to  obtain  a 
conviction,  per  fas  aut  nefas,  and  opens  his  case 
by  endeavouring  to  create  a  prejudice  against  the 
prisoner  in  the  minds  of  the  jury.  In  his  eager- 
ness to  carry  out  this  laudable  design,  the  Quarterly 


v  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  185 

Reviewer  cannot  even  state  the  history  of  the 
doctrine  of  natural  selection  without  an  oblique 
and  entirely  unjustifiable  attempt  to  depreciate 
Mr.  Darwin.  "  To  Mr.  Darwin,"  says  he,  "  and 
(through  Mr.  Wallace's  reticence)  to  Mr.  Darwin 
alone,  is  due  the  credit  of  having  first  brought  it 
prominently  forward  and  demonstrated  its  truth." 
No  one  can  less  desire  than  I  do,  to  throw  a  doubt 
upon  Mr.  Wallace's  originality,  or  to  question  his 
claim  to  the  honour  of  being  one  of  the  originators 
of  the  doctrine  of  natural  selection  ;  but  the  state- 
ment that  Mr.  Darwin  has  the  sole  credit  of 
originating  the  doctrine  because  of  Mr.  Wallace's 
reticence  is  simply  ridiculous.  The  proof  of  this 
is,  in  the  first  place,  afforded  by  Mr.  Wallace  him- 
self, whose  noble  freedom  from  petty  jealousy  in 
this  matter  smaller  folk  would  do  well  to  imitate, 
and  who  writes  thus  : — "  I  have  felt  all  my  life, 
and  I  still  feel,  the  most  sincere  satisfaction 
that  Mr.  Darwin  had  been  at  work  long  before 
me  and  that  it  was  not  left  for  me  to  attempt  to 
write  the  '  Origin  of  Species.'  I  have  long  since 
measured  my  own  strength,  and  know  well  that  it 
would  be  quite  unequal  to  that  task."  So  that  if 
there  was  any  reticence  at  all  in  the  matter,  it  was 
Mr.  Darwin's  reticence  during  the  long  twenty 
years  of  study  which  intervened  between  the  con- 
ception and  the  publication  of  his  theory,  which 
gave  Mr.  Wallace  the  chance  of  being  an  indepen- 
dent discoverer  of  the  importance  of  natural 


186  MR.  DARWIN'S  CRITICS  v 

selection.  And,  finally,  if  it  be  recollected  that 
Mr.  Darwin's  and  Mr.  Wallace's  essays  were 
published  simultaneously  in  the  "  Journal  of  the 
Linnaean  Society  "  for  1858,  it  follows  that  the 
Reviewer,  while  obliquely  depreciating  Mr.  Dar- 
win's deserts,  has  in  reality  awarded  to  him  a 
priority  which,  in  legal  strictness,  does  not  exist. 
Mr.  Mivart,  whose  opinions  so  often  concur  with 
those  of  the  Quarterly  Reviewer,  puts  the  case  in 
a  way,  which  I  much  regret  to  be  obliged  to  say, 
is,  in  my  judgment,  quite  as  incorrect ;  though 
the  injustice  may  be  less  glaring.  He  says  that 
the  theory  of  natural  selection  is,  in  general,  ex- 
clusively associated  with  the  name  of  Mr.  Darwin, 
"  on  account  of  the  noble  self-abnegation  of  Mr. 
Wallace."  As  I  have  said,  no  one  can  honour  Mr. 
Wallace  more  than  I  do,  both  for  what  he  has 
done  and  for  what  he  has  not  done,  in  his  relation 
to  Mr.  Darwin.  And  perhaps  nothing  is  more 
creditable  to  him  than  his  frank  declaration  that 
he  could  not  have  written  such  a  work  as  the 
"  Origin  of  Species."  But,  by  this  declaration,  the 
person  most  directly  interested  in  the  matter  re- 
pudiates, by  anticipation,  Mr.  Mivart's  suggestion 
that  Mr.  Darwin's  eminence  is  more  or  less  due  to 
Mr.  Wallace's  modesty. 


VI 
EVOLUTION  IN   BIOLOGY 

[1878] 

IN  the  former  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
term  "  evolution  "  was  introduced  into  biological 
writings,  in  order  to  denote  the  mode  in  which 
some  of  the  most  eminent  physiologists  of  that  time 
conceived  that  the  generations  of  living  things  took 
place ;  in  opposition  to  the  hypothesis  advocated, 
in  the  preceding  century,  by  Harvey  in  that  re- 
markable work  !  which  would  give  him  a  claim  to 
rank  among  the  founders  of  biological  science,  even 
had  he  not  been  the  discoverer  of  the  circulation 
of  the  blood. 

One  of  Harvey's  prime  objects  is  to  defend  and 
establish,  on  the  basis  of  direct  observation,  the 
opinion  already  held  by  Aristotle  ;  that,  in  the 
higher  animals  at  any  rate,  the  formation  of  the 

1  The  Exercitationes  de  Gcneratione  Animalium,  which  Dr 
George  Ent  extracted  from  him  and  published  in  1651. 


188  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

new  organism  by  the  process  of  generation  takes 
place,  not  suddenly,  by  simultaneous  accretion  of 
rudiments  of  all,  or  of  the  most  important,  of  the 
organs  of  the  adult ;  nor  by  sudden  metamorphosis 
of  a  formative  substance  into  a  miniature  of  the 
whole,  which  subsequently  grows ;  but  by  cpiyenesis, 
or  successive  differentiation  of  a  relatively  homo- 
geneous rudiment  into  the  parts  and  structures 
which  are  characteristic  of  the  adult. 


' '  Et  primo,  quidem,  quoniam  per  epigenesin  sive  partium 
superexorientium  additanientum  pullum  fabricari  certum  est : 
qusenam  pars  ante  alias  omnes  exstruatur,  et  quid  de  ilia  ejusque 
generandi  modo  observandum  veniat,  dispicieruus.  Ratum  sane 
est  et  in  ovo  manifesto  apparet  quod  Aristoteles  de  perfectorum 
animalium  generatione  enuntiat :  nimirum,  non  omnes  partes 
simul  fieri,  sed  ordine  aliam  post  aliam  ;  primumque  existere 
particulam  genitalem,  cujus  virtute  postea  (tanquam  ex  principio 
quodam)  reliquaj  omnes  partes  prosiliant.  Qualem  in  plantarum 
seminibus  (fabis,  puta,  aut  glandibus)  gemmam  sive  apicem  pro- 
tuberantem  cernimus,  totius  futurse  arboris  principium.  Estque 
hone  particula,  veliit  filius  cmancipatus  seorsumque  collocatus,  et 
principium  per  se  vivens  ;  unde  postea  membrorum  ordo  describ- 
itur ;  et  qucecunque  ad  absolvcndum  animal  pertinent,  dispon- 
untur.1  Quoniam  enim  nulla  pars  se  ipsam  general;  sed  post- 
quam  generata  est,  se  ipsam  jam  auget ;  ideo  earn  primum  o-riri 
necesse  est,  quce  principium  augendi  contineat  (sive  enim  planta, 
sive  animal  est,  ceque  omnibus  inest  quod  vim  habcat  vcgetandi, 
sive  nutriendi),2  simulque  reliquas  omnes  partes  suo  quamque 
ordine  distinguat  et  formet ;  proindeque  in  eadem  primogenita 
particula  anima  primario  inest,  sensus,  motusque,  et  totius  vitae 
auctor  et  principium."  (Exercitatio  51.) 


1  De  Generatione  Animalium,  lib.  ii.  cap.  x. 

2  De  Generatione,  lib.  ii.  cap.  iv. 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  189 

Harvey  proceeds  to  contrast  this  view  with  that 
of  the  "  Medici,"  or  followers  of  Hippocrates  and 
Galen,  who,  "  badly  philosophising,"  imagined  that 
the  brain,  the  heart,  and  the  liver  were  simul- 
taneously first  generated  in  the  form  of  vesicles ; 
and,  at  the  same  time,  while  expressing  his 
agreement  with  Aristotle  in  the  principle  of  epi- 
genesis,  he  maintains  that  it  is  the  blood  which  is 
the  primal  generative  part,  and  not,  as  Aristotle 
thought,  the  heart. 

In  the  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  doctrine  of  epigenesis,  thus  advocated  by 
Harvey,  was  controverted,  on  the  ground  of  direct 
observation,  by  Malpighi,  who  affirmed  that  the 
body  of  the  chick  is  to  be  seen  in  the  egg,  before 
the  punctum  sanguineum  makes  it  appearance. 
But,  from  this  perfectly  correct  observation  a  con- 
clusion which  is  by  no  means  warranted  was  drawn  ; 
namely,  that  the  chick,  as  a  whole,  really  exists  in 
the  egg  antecedently  to  incubation  ;  and  that  what 
happens  in  the  course  of  the  latter  process  is  no 
addition  of  new  parts,  "  alias  post  alias  natas,"  as 
Harvey  puts  it,  but  a  simple  expansion,  or  unfold- 
ing, of  the  organs  which  already  exist,  though  they 
are  too  small  and  inconspicuous  to  be  discovered. 
The  weight  of  Malpighi's  observations  therefore 
fell  into  the  scale  of  that  doctrine  which  Harvey 
terms  metamorphosis,  in  contradistinction  to  epi- 
genesis. 

The  views  of  Malphigi  were  warmly  welcomed, 


190  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

on  philosophical  grounds,  by  Leibnitz,1  who  found 
in  them  a  support  to  his  hypothesis  of  monads, 
and  by  Malebranche  ;  2  while,  in  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  not  only  speculative  consider- 
ations, but  a  great  number  of  new  and  interesting 
observations  on  the  phenomena  of  generation,  led 
the  ingenious  Bonnet,  and  Haller,3  the  first  physi- 
ologist of  the  age,  to  adopt,  advocate,  and  extend 
them. 

1  "Cependant,  pour  revenir  aux  formes  ordinaires  ou  aux 
ames  materielles,  cette  duree  qu'il  leur  fuut  attribuer  a  la  place 
de  celle  qu'on  avoit  attribute  aux  atomes  pourroit  faire  douter 
si  elles  ne  vont  pas  de  corps  en  corps  ;  ce  qui  seroit  la  me- 
tempsychose,  a  pen  pres  comme  quelques  philosophes  ont  cru  la 
transmission  du  mouvement  et  celle  des  especes.     Mais  cette 
imagination  est  bien  eloignee  de  la  nature  des  choses.     II  n'y  a 
point  de  tel  passage  ;  et  c'est  ici   ou  les  transformations  de 
Messieurs  Swammerdam,  Malpighi,    et   Leewenhoek,  qui  sont 
des  plus  excellens  ob.servateurs  de  notre  terns,  sont  venues  a  mon 
secours,  et  m'ont  fait  admettre  plus  aisement,  que  1'animal,  et 
toute  autre  substance  organisee  ne  commence  point  lorsque  nous 
le  croyons,  et  que  sa  generation   apparente  n'est  qu'une   de- 
veloppement  et  une  espece  d'augmentation.  Aussi  ai  je  remarque 
que  1'auteur  de  la  Recherche  de  la  Verite,  M.   Regis,  M.   Hart- 
soeker,  et  d'autres  habiles  hommes  n'ont  pas  ete  fort  eloignes 
de  ce  sentiment."     Leibnitz,  Systemc  Nouveau  de  la  Nature, 
1695.     The  doctrine  of  "Emboitement "   is  contained  in  the 
Considerations  sur  le  Principe  de  Vie,  1705  ;  the  preface  to  the 
Theodicec,  1710  ;  and  the  Principes  de  la  Nature  et  de  la  Grace 
(§  6),  1718. 

2  "  II  est  vrai  que  la  pensee  la  plus  raisonnable  et  la  plus 
conforme  a  1'experience  sur  cette  question  tres  difficile  de  la 
formation  du  foetus  ;  c'est  que  les  enfans  sont  deja  presque  tout 
formes  avant  meme  1'action  par  laquelle  ils  sont  consus  ;  et  que 
leurs  meres  ne  font  que  leur  donner  1'accroissement  ordinaire 
dans  le  temps  de  la  grossesse. "     De  la  Recherche  de  la   Vcrite, 
livre  ii.  chap.  vii.  p.  334,  7th  ed.,  1721. 

3  The  writer  is  indebted  to  Dr.  Allen  Thomson  for  reference 
to  the  evidence  contained  in  a  note  to  Haller's  edition  of  Boer- 
haave's  Prcelectiones  Acadcmicce,  vol.  v.  pt.  ii.  p.  497,  published 
in  1744,  that  Haller  originally  advocated  epigenesis. 


VI  EVOLUTION  IN  BIOLOGY  191 

Bonnet  affirms  that,  before  fecundation,  the  hen's 
egg  contains  an  excessively  minute  but  complete 
chick  ;  and  that  fecundation  and  incubation  simply 
cause  this  germ  to  absorb  nutritious  matters,  which 
are  deposited  in  the  interstices  of  the  elementary 
structures  of  which  the  miniature  chick,  or  germ, 
is  made  up.  The  consequence  of  this  intussuscep- 
tive  growth  is  the  "  development  "  or  "evolution" 
of  the  germ  into  the  visible  bird.  Thus  an  organ- 
ised individual  (tout  organist)  "  is  a  composite  body 
consisting  of  the  original,  or  elementary,  parts  and 
of  the  mattei's  which  have  been  associated  with 
them  by  the  aid  of  nutrition ; "  so  that,  if  these 
matters  could  be  extracted  from  the  individual 
(tout),  it  would,  so  to  speak,  become  concentrated 
in  a  point,  and  would  thus  be  restored  to  its 
primitive  condition  of  a  germ  ;  "just  as  by  extract- 
ing from  a  bone  the  calcareous  substance  which  is 
the  source  of  its  hardness,  it  is  reduced  to  its 
primitive  state  of  gristle  or  membrane."  l 

"Evolution"  and  "development"  are,  for 
Bonnet,  synonymous  terms  ;  and  since  by  "  evolu- 
tion "  he  means  simply  the  expansion  of  that 
which  was  invisible  into  visibility,  he  was  natur- 
ally led  to  the  conclusion,  at  which  Leibnitz  had 
arrived  by  a  different  line  of  reasoning,  that  no 
such  thing  as  generation,  in  the  proper  sense  of 
the  word,  exists  in  Nature.  The  growth  of  an 

1  Considerations  sur  les  Corps  organists,  chap.  x. 


192  EVOLUTION  IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

organic  being  is  simply  a  process  of  enlargement 
as  a  particle  of  dry  gelatine  may  be  swelled 
up  by  the  intussusception  of  water;  its  death 
is  a  shrinkage,  such  as  the  swelled  jelly  might 
undergo  on  desiccation.  Nothing  really  new  is 
produced  in  the  living  world,  but  the  germs  which 
develop  have  existed  since  the  beginning  of  things ; 
and  nothing  really  dies,  but,  when  what  we  call 
death  takes  place,  the  living  thing  shrinks  back 
into  its  germ  state.1 

The  two  parts  of  Bonnet's  hypothesis,  namely, 
the  doctrine  that  all  living  things  proceed  from 
pre-existing  germs,  and  that  these  contain,  one 

1  Bonnet  had  the  courage  of  his  opinions,  and  in  the 
Palingtntsic  Philosophique,  part  vi.  chap,  iv.,  he  develops  a 
hypothesis  which  he  terms  "Evolution  naturelle  ;  "  and  which, 
making  allowance  for  his  peculiar  views  of  the  nature  of 
generation,  bears  no  small  resemblance  to  what  is  understood 
by  "evolution"  at  the  present  day  : — 

"  Si  la  volonte  divine  a  cree  par  un  seul  Acte  1'  Universality 
des  etres,  d'ou  venoient  ces  plantes  et  ces  animaux  dont  iloyse 
nous  decrit  la  Production  au  troisieme  et  au  cinquieme  jour  du 
renouvellement  de  notre  monde  ? 

"  Abuserois-je  de  la  liberte  de  conjectures  si  je  disois,  que  les 
Plantes  et  les  Animaux  qui  existent  aujourd'hui  sont  parvenus 
par  une  sorte  d'evolution  naturelle  des  Etres  organises  qui 
peuplaient  ce  premier  Monde,  sorti  immediatement  des  MAINS 
du  CREATEUR  ?  .  .  . 

' '  Ne  supposons  que  trois  revolutions.  La  Terre  vient  de  sortir 
des  MAINS  du  CREATEUR.  Des  causes  preparees  par  sa  SAGESSE 
font  developper  de  toutes  parts  les  Gernies.  Les  Etres  organises 
commencent  a  jouir  de  1'existence.  Us  etoient  probablement 
alors  bien  differens  de  ce  qu'ils  sont  aujourd'hui.  Us  1'etoient 
autant  que  ce  premier  Monde  differoit  de  celui  que  nous  habitons. 
Nous  manquons  de  moyens  pour  juger  de  ces  dissemblances, 
et  peut-etre  que  le  plus  habile  Naturaliste  qui  auroit  ete  place 
dans  ce  premier  Monde  y  auroit  entierement  meconnu  nos  Plantea 
et  nos  Animaux." 


Vi  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  193 

inclosed  within  the  other,  the  germs  of  all  future 
living  things,  which  is  the  liypothesis  of  "  emboite- 
mcnt ;  "  and  the  doctrine  that  every  germ  contains 
in  miniature  all  the  organs  of  the  adult,  which  is 
the  hypothesis  of  evolution  or  development,  in  the 
primary  senses  of  these  words,  must  be  carefully 
distinguished.  In  fact,  while  holding  firmly  by 
the  former,  Bonnet  more  or  less  modified  the 
latter  in  his  later  writings,  and,  at  length,  he 
admits  that  a  "germ"  need  not  be  an  actual 
miniature  of  the  organism ;  but  that  it  may  be 
merely  an  "  original  preformation "  capable  of 
producing  the  latter.1 

But,  thus  defined,  the  germ  is  neither  more  nor 
less  than  the  "  particula  genitalis  "  of  Aristotle, 
or  the  "  primordium  vegetale  "  or  "  ovum "  of 
Harvey ;  and  the  "  evolution "  of  such  a  germ 
would  not  be  distinguishable  from  "  epigenesis." 

Supported  by  the  great  authority  of  Haller,  the 
doctrine  of  evolution,  or  development,  prevailed 
throughout  the  whole  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  Cuvier  appears  to  have  substantially  adopted 
Bonnet's  later  views,  though  probably  he  would 
not  have  gone  all  lengths  in  the  direction  of 
"  emboitement."  In  a  well-known  note  to 
Laurillard's  "  £loge,"  prefixed  to  the  last  edition 

1  "Ce  mot  (germe)  ne  designera  pas  seulement  un  corps 
organise  riduil  en  petit ;  il  designera  encore  toute  espece  de  pr6- 
formation  originelle  dont  un  Tout  organique  pent  risulter  comme 
de  son  principc  immtdiat." — Paliwjinisie  Philosophic-lie,  part  x. 
chap.  ii. 


194  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

of  the  "  Ossemens  fossiles,"  the  "  radical  de  1'etre  " 
is  much  the  same  thing  as  Aristotle's  "  particula 
genitalis  "  and  Harvey's  "  ovum."  l 

Bonnet's  eminent  contemporary,  Buffon,  held 
nearly  the  same  views  with  respect  to  the  nature 
of  the  germ,  and  expresses  them  even  more  con- 
fidently. 

"  Ceux  qui  ontcru  que  le  cceur  etoit  le  premier  forme,  se  sont 
trompes  ;  ceux  qui  disent  que  c'est  le  sang  se  trompent  aussi : 
tout  est  forme  en  meme  temps.  Si  Ton  ne  consulte  que  1'obser- 
vation,  le  poulet  se  voit  dans  1'ceuf  avant  qu'il  ait  etc  couve."  2 

"J'ai  ouvert  une  grande  quantite  d'ceufs  a  differens  temps 
avant  et  apres  1'incubation,  et  je  me  suis  convaincu  par  mes 
yeux  que  le  poulet  existe  en  entier  dans  le  milieu  de  la  cicatricule 
au  moment  qu'il  sort  du  corps  de  la  poule."  3 

The  "  moule  interieur  "  of  Buffon  is  the  aggre- 
gate of  elementary  parts  which  constitute  the 
individual,  and  is  thus  the  equivalent  of  Bonnet's 
germ,4  as  defined  in  the  passage  cited  above. 
But  Buffon  further  imagined  that  innumerable 
"  molecules  organiques  "  are  dispersed  throughout 
the  world,  and  that  alimentation  consists  in  the 

1  "  M.  Cuvier  considerant  que  tons  les  etres  organises  sont 
derives  de  parens,  et  ne  voyant  dans  la  nature  aucune  force 
capable  de  produire  1'organisation,   croyait  a  la  pre-existence 
des  germes  ; .  non  pas  a  la  pre-existence  d'un  etre  tout  forme, 
puisqu'il  est  Men  evident  que  ce  n'est  que  par  des  developpemens 
successifs  que  1'etre   acquiert  sa  forme ;    mais,    si    Ton    peut 
s'exprimer  ainsi,  a  la  pre-existence  du  radical  de  I'Strc,  radical 
qui  existe  avant  que  la  serie  des  evolutions  ne  commence,  et  qui 
remonte  certainement,  suivant  la  belle  observation  de  Bonnet,  a 
plusieurs  generations." — Laurillard,  Eloge  de  Cuvier,  note  12. 

2  Histoire  Naturclle,  torn.  ii.  ed.  ii.  1750,  p.  350. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  351.     4  See  particularly  Buffon,  I.e.  p.  41. 


Vi  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  195 

appropriation  by  the  parts  of  an  organism  of  those 
molecules  which  are  analogous  to  them.  Growth, 
therefore,  was,  on  this  hypothesis,  a  process 
partly  of  simple  evolution,  and  partly  of  what  has 
been  termed  "syngenesis."  Buffon's  opinion  is, 
in  fact,  a  sort  of  combination  of  views,  essentially 
similar  to  those  of  Bonnet,  with  others,  somewhat 
similar  to  those  of  the  "  Medici "  whom  Harvey 
condemns.  The  "  molecules  organiques "  are 
physical  equivalents  of  Leibnitz's  "  monads." 

It  is  a  striking  example  of  the  difficulty  of 
getting  people  to  use  their  own  powers  of  investiga- 
tion accurately,  that  this  form  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  should  have  held  its  ground  so  long ; 
for  it  was  thoroughly  and  completely  exploded, 
not  long  after  its  enunciation,  by  Casper  Fried  erich 
Wolff,  who  in  his  "  Theoria  Generationis,"  pub- 
lished in  1759,  placed  the  opposite  theory  of 
epigenesis  upon  the  secure  foundation  of  fact, 
from  which  it  has  never  been  displaced.  But 
Wolff  had  no  immediate  successors.  The  school 
of  Cuvier  was  lamentably  deficient  in  embryo- 
logists  ;  and  it  was  only  in  the  course  of  the  first 
thirty  years  of  the  present  century,  that  Prevost 
and  Dumas  in  France,  and,  later  on,  Dollinger, 
Pander,  Yon  Bar,  Rathke,and  Remak  in  Germany, 
founded  modern  embryology ;  while,  at  the  same 
time,  they  proved  the  utter  incompatibility  of  the 
hypothesis  of  evolution,  as  formulated  by  Bonnet 
and  Haller,  with  easily  demonstrable  facts. 


196  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  VI 

Nevertheless,  though  the  conceptions  originally 
denoted  by  "  evolution  "  and  "  development "  were 
shown  to  be  untenable,  the  words  retained  their 
application  to  the  process  by  which  the  embryos  of 
living  beings  gradually  make  their  appearance  ; 
and  the  terms  "  Development,"  "  Entwickelung," 
and  "Evolutio,"  are  now  indiscriminately  used  for 
the  series  of  genetic  changes  exhibited  by  living 
beings,  by  writers  who  would  emphatically  deny 
that  "  Development "  or  "  Entwickelung "  or 
"Evolutio,"  in  the  sense  in  which  these  words 
were  usually  employed  by  Bonnet  or  by  Haller, 
ever  occurs. 

Evolution,  or  development,  is,  in  fact,  at  present 
employed  in  biology  as  a  general  name  for  the 
history  of  the  steps  by  which  any  living  being  has 
acquired  the  morphological  and  the  physiological 
characters  which  distinguish  it.  As  civil  history 
may  be  divided  into  biography,  which  is  the  history 
of  individuals,  and  universal  history,  which  is  the 
history  of  the  human  race,  so  evolution  falls 
naturally  into  two  categories — the  evolution  of  the 
individual,  and  the  evolution  of  the  sum  of  living 
beings.  It  will  be  convenient  to  deal  with  the 
modern  doctrine  of  evolution  under  these  two  heads. 

I.     The  Evolution  of  the  Individual. 
No  exception  is  at  this  time,  known   to  the 
general  law,  established  upon  an  immense  multi- 
tude of  direct  observations,  that  every  living  thing 


Vi  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  197 

is  evolved  from  a  particle  of  matter  in  which  no 
trace  of  the  distinctive  characters  of  the  adult 
form  of  that  living  thing  is  discernible.  This 
particle  is  termed  a  germ.  Harvey1  says — 

"Omnibus  viventibus  primordium  insit,  ex  quo  et  a  quo  pro- 
veniaut.  Liceat  hoc  ndbispritnordiitm  vegetale  nominate  ;  ncmpe 
substantiam  quandam  corpoream  vitam  habentem  potentia  ;  vel 
quoddam  per  se  existens,  quod  aptum  sit,  in  vegetativam 
formam,  ab  interno  principle  operante,  mutari.  Quale  nempe 
primordium,  ovum  est  et  plantarum  semen  ;  tale  etiam  vivi- 
parorum  conceptus,  et  insectorum  vermis  ab  Aristotele  dictus  : 
diversa  scilicet  diversorum  vivehtium  primordia." 

The  definition  of  a  germ  as  "  matter  potentially 
alive,  and  having  within  itself  the  tendency  to 
assume  a  definite  living  form,"  appears  to  meet 
all  the  requirements  of  modern  science.  For, 
notwithstanding  it  might  be  justly  questioned 
whether  a  germ  is  not  merely  potentially,  but 
rather  actually,  alive,  though  its  vital  manifesta- 
tions are  reduced  to  a  minimum,  the  term 
"  potential "  may  fairly  be  used  in  a  sense  broad 
enough  to  escape  the  objection.  And  the  quali- 
fication of  "  potential "  has  the  advantage  of 
reminding  us  that  the  great  characteristic  of 
the  germ  is  not  so  much  what  it  is,  but  what  it 
may,  under  suitable  conditions,  become.  Harvey 
shared  the  belief  of  Aristotle — whose  writings  he 
so  often  quotes  and  of  whom  he  speaks  as  his 

1  Exercitationes  de  Generations.  Ex.  62,  "Ovum  esse 
primordium  commune  omnibus  animalibus." 


198  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

precursor  and  model,  with  the  generous  respect  with 
which  one  genuine  worker  should  regard  another 
— that  such  germs  may  arise  by  a  process  of 
"  equivocal  generation  "  out  of  not-living  matter ; 
and  the  aphorism  so  commonly  ascribed  to  him, 
"  omne  vivum  ex  ovo,"  and  which  is  indeed  a  fair 
summary  of  his  reiterated  assertions,  though 
incessantly  employed  against  the  modern  advo- 
cates of  spontaneous  generation,  can  be  honestly 
so  used  only  by  those  who  have  never  read  a 
score  of  pages  of  the  "  Exercitationes."  Harvey, 
in  fact,  believed  as  implicitly  as  Aristotle  did  in  the 
equivocal  generation  of  the  lower  animals.  But, 
while  the  course  of  modern  investigation  has  only 
brought  out  into  greater  prominence  the  accuracy 
of  Harvey's  conception  of  the  nature  and  mode  of 
development  of  germs,  it  has  as  distinctly  tended 
to  disprove  the  occurrence  of  equivocal  generation, 
or  abiogenesis,  in  the  present  course  of  nature. 
In  the  immense  majority  of  both  plants  and 
animals,  it  is  certain  that  the  germ  is  not  merely 
a  body  in  which  life  is  dormant  or  potential,  but 
that  it  is  itself  simply  a  detached  portion  of 
the  substance  of  a  pre-existing  living  body  ;  and 
the  evidence  has  yet  to  be  adduced  which  will 
satisfy  any  cautious  reasoner  that  "  omne  vivum 
ex  vivo"  is  not  as  well-established  a  law  of 
the  existing  course  of  nature  as  "  onine  vivum 
ex  ovo." 

In  all  instances  which  have  yet  been  invest!- 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  199 

gated,  the  substance  of  this  germ  has  a  peculiar 
chemical  composition,  consisting  of  at  fewest  four 
elementary  bodies,  viz.,  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen, 
and  nitrogen,  united  into  the  ill-defined  compound 
known  as  protein,  and  associated  with  much 
water,  and  very  generally,  if  not  always,  with 
sulphur  and  phosphorus  in  minute  proportions. 
Moreover,  up  to  the  present  time,  protein  is  known 
only  as  a  product  and  constituent  of  living 
matter.  Again,  a  true  germ  is  either  devoid  of 
any  structure  discernible  by  optical  means,  or,  at 
most,  it  is  a  simple  nucleated  cell.1 

In  all  cases  the  process  of  evolution  consists  in 
a  succession  of  changes  of  the  form,  structure, 
and  functions  of  the  germ,  by  which  it  passes, 
step  by  step,  from  an  extreme  simplicity,  or  rela- 
tive homogeneity,  of  visible  structure,  to  a  greater 
or  less  degree  of  complexity  or  heterogeneity; 
and  the  course  of  progressive  differentiation  is 
usually  accompanied  by  growth,  which  is  effected 
by  intussusception.  This  intussusception,  how- 
ever, is  a  very  different  process  from  that  imagined 
either  by  Buffon  or  by  Bonnet.  The  substance 
by  the  addition  of  which  the  germ  is  enlarged  is 
in  no  case  simply  absorbed,  ready-made,  from  the 
not-living  world  and  packed  between  the  elemen- 
tary constituents  of  the  germ,  as  Bonnet  imagined ; 

1  In  some  cases  of  sexless  multiplication  the  germ  is  a  cell- 
aggregate— if  we  call  germ  only  that  which  is  already  detached 
from  the  parent  organism. 
42 


200  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

still  less  does  it  consist  of  the  "  molecules  or- 
ganiques  "  of  Buffon.  The  new  material  is,  in  great 
measure,  not  only  absorbed  but  assimilated,  so 
that  it  becomes  part  and  parcel  of  the  molecular 
structure  of  the  living  body  into  which  it  enters. 
And,  so  far  from  the  fully  developed  organism 
being  simply  the  germ  plus  the  nutriment  which 
it  has  absorbed,  it  is  probable  that  the  adult  con- 
tains neither  in  form,  nor  in  substance,  more  than 
an  inappreciable  fraction  of  the  constituents  of 
the  germ,  and  that  it  is  almost,  if  not  wholly, 
made  up  of  assimilated  and  metamorphosed 
nutriment.  In  the  great  majority  of  cases,  at 
any  rate,  the  full-grown  organism  becomes  what 
it  is  by  the  absorption  of  not-living  matter,  and 
its  conversion  into  living  matter  of  a  specific  type. 
As  Harvey  says  (Ex.  45),  all  parts  of  the  body 
are  nourished  "  ab  eodem  succo  alibili,  aliter 
aliterque  cambiato,"  "  ut  plantao  omnes  ex  eodem 
communi  nutrimento  (sive  rore  seu  terras 
humore)." 

In  all  animals  and  plants  above  the  lowest  the 
germ  is  a  nucleated  cell,  using  that  term  in  its 
broadest  sense  ;  and  the  first  step  in  the  process 
of  the  evolution  of  the  individual  is  the  division 
of  this  cell  into  two  or  more  portions.  The  pro- 
cess of  division  is  repeated,  until  the  organism, 
from  being  unicellular,  becomes  multicellular. 
The  single  cell  becomes  a  cell-aggregate ;  and  it 
is  to  the  growth  and  metamorphosis  of  the  cells 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  201 

of  the  cell-aggregate  thus  produced,  that  all  the 
organs  and  tissues  of  the  adult  owe  their  origin. 

In  certain  animals  belonging  to  every  one  of 
the  chief  groups  into  which  the  Metazoa  are 
divisible,  the  cells  of  the  cell-aggregate  which 
results  from  the  process  of  yelk-division,  and 
which  is  termed  a  morula,  diverge  from  one 
another  in  such  a  manner  as  to  give  rise  to  a 
central  space,  around  which  they  dispose  them- 
selves as  a  coat  or  envelope ;  and  thus  the  morula 
becomes  a  vesicle  filled  with  fluid,  the  planula. 
The  wall  of  the  planula  is  next  pushed  in  on  one 
side,  or  invaginated,  whereby  it  is  converted  into 
a  double-walled  sac  with  an  opening,  the  Uasto- 
porc,  which  leads  into  the  cavity  lined  by  the 
inner  wall.  This  cavity  is  the  primitive  alimen- 
tary cavity  or  archcnteron ;  the  inner  or  inva- 
ginated layer  is  the  hypollast ;  the  outer  the 
cpiblast ;  and  the  embryo,  in  this  stage,  is  termed 
a  gastrula.  In  all  the  higher  animals  a  layer  of 
cells  makes  its  appearance  between  the  hypoblast 
and  the  epiblast,  and  is  termed  the  mesoblast.  In 
the  further  course  of  development  the  epiblast 
becomes  the  ectoderm  or  epidermic  layer  of  the 
body  ;  the  hypoblast  becomes  the  epithelium  of 
the  middle  portion  of  the  alimentary  canal ;  and 
the  mesoblast  gives  rise  to  all  the  other  tissues, 
except  the  central  nervous  system,  which  origin- 
ates from  an  ingrowth  of  the  epiblast. 

With  more  or  less  modification  in  detail,  the 


202  EVOLUTION  IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

embryo  has  been  observed  to  pass  through  these 
successive  evolutional  stages  in  sundry  Sponges, 
Coelenterates,  Worms,  Echinoderms,  Tunicates, 
Arthropods,  Mollusks,  and  Vertebrates ;  and  there 
are  valid  reasons  for  the  belief  that  all  animals  of 
higher  organisation  than  the  Protozoa  agree  in  the 
general  character  of  the  early  stages  of  their  indi- 
vidual evolution.  Each,  starting  from  the  condition 
of  a  simple  nucleated  cell,  becomes  a  cell-aggregate ; 
and  this  passes  through  a  condition  which  re- 
presents the  gastrula  stage,  before  taking  on  the 
features  distinctive  of  the  group  to  which  it  belongs. 
Stated  in  this  form,  the  "  gastraea  theory "  of 
Haeckel  appears  to  the  present  writer  to  be  one  of 
most  important  and  best  founded  of  recent  general- 
isations. So  far  as  individual  plants  and  animals 
are  concerned,  therefore,  evolution  is  not  a  specu- 
lation but  a  fact ;  and  it  takes  place  by  epigenesis. 

"Animal.  .  .  per  epigenesin  procreatur,  materiam  simul  attra- 
hit,  parat,  concoquit,  et  eadem  utitur  ;  formatur  simul  et  augetur 
.  .  .  primum  futuri  corporis  concrementum  .  .  .  prout  augetur, 
dividitur  sensim  et  distinguitur  in  partes,  non  simul  omnes,  sed 
alias  post  alias  natas,  et  ordine  quasque  suo  emergentes." 1 

In  these  words,  by  the  divination  of  genius, 
Harvey,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  summed  up 
the  outcome  of  the  work  of  all  those  who,  with 
appliances  he  could  not  dream  of,  are  continuing 
his  labours  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

1  Harvey,  Exercitationes  de  Generatione.  Ex.  45,  "Quoeuam 
sit  pulli  materia  et  quomodo  fiat  in  Ovo. " 


Tl  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  203 

Nevertheless,  though  the  doctrine  of  epigenesis, 
as  understood  by  Harvey,  has  definitively  triumphed 
over  the  doctrine  of  evolution,  as  understood 
by  his  opponents  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
it  is  not  impossible  that,  when  the  analysis  of  the 
process  of  development  is  carried  still  further,  and 
the  origin  of  the  molecular  components  of  the 
physically  gross,  though  sensibly  minute,  bodies 
which  we  term  germs  is  traced,  the  theory  of  de- 
velopment will  approach  more  nearly  to  meta- 
morphosis than  to  epigenesis.  Harvey  thought 
that  impregnation  influenced  the  female  organism 
as  a  contagion  ;  and  that  the  blood,  which  he  con- 
ceived to  be  the  first  rudiment  of  the  germ,  arose 
in  the  clear  fluid  of  the  "  colliquamentum  "  of  the 
ovum  by  a  process  of  concrescence,  as  a  sort  of 
living  precipitate.  We  now  know,  on  the  contrary, 
that  the  female  germ  or  ovum,  in  all  the  higher 
animals  and  plants,  is  a  body  which  possesses  the 
structure  of  a  nucleated  cell;  that  impregnation 
consists  in  the  fusion  of  the  substance  *  of  another 
more  or  less  modified  nucleated  cell,  the  male  germ, 
with  the  ovum ;  and  that  the  structural  com- 
ponents of  the  body  of  the  embryo  are  all  derived, 
by  a  process  of  division,  from  the  coalesced  male 
and  female  germs.  Hence  it  is  conceivable,  and 
indeed  probable,  that  every  part  of  the  adult  con- 
tains molecules,  derived  both  from  the  male  and 

1  [At  any  rate  of  the  nuclei  of  the  two  germ-cells.     1893]. 


204  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

from  the  female  parent ;  and  that,  regarded  as  a 
mass  of  molecules,  the  entire  organism  may  be  com- 
pared to  a  web  of  which  the  warp  is  derived  from  the 
female  and  the  woof  from  the  male.  And  each  of 
these  may  constitute  one  individuality,  in  the  same 
sense  as  the  whole  organism  is  one  individual,  al- 
though the  matter  of  the  organism  has  been  con- 
stantly changing.  The  primitive  male  and  female 
molecules  may  play  the  part  of  Buffon's  "  moules 
organiques,"  and  mould  the  assimilated  nutriment, 
each  according  to  its  own  type,  into  innumerable 
new  molecules.  From  this  point  of  view  the  process, 
which,  in  its  superficial  aspect,  is  epigenesis,  appears 
in  essence,  to  be  evolution,  in  the  modified  sense 
adopted  in  Bonnet's  later  writings ;  and  develop- 
ment is  merely  the  expansion  of  a  potential  organ- 
ism or  "  original  preformation  "  according  to  fixed 
laws. 


II.    The  Evolution  of  the  Sum  of  Living  Beings. 

The  notion  that  all  the  kinds  of  animals  and 
plants  may  have  come  into  existence  by  the  growth 
and  modification  of  primordial  germs  is  as  old  as 
speculative  thought;  but  the  modern  scientific 
form  of  the  doctrine  can  be  traced  historically  to 
the  influence  of  several  converging  lines  of  philo- 
sophical speculation  and  of  physical  observation, 
none  of  which  go  farther  back  than  the  seven- 
teenth century.  These  are  : — 


Vi  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  205 

1.  The  enunciation  by  Descartes  of  the  concep- 
tion that  the  physical  universe,  whether  living  or 
not  living,  is  a  mechanism,  and  that,  as  such,  it  is 
explicable  on  physical  principles. 

2.  The  observation  of  the  gradations  of  struc- 
ture, from  extreme  simplicity  to  very  great  com- 
plexity, presented  by  living  things,  and  of  the 
relation  of  these  graduated  forms  to  one  another. 

3.  The  observation  of  the  existence  of  an  anal- 
ogy between  the  series  of  gradations  presented  by 
the  species  which  compose   any  great  group  of 
animals  or  plants,  and  the  series  of  embryonic 
conditions  of  the  highest  members  of  that  group. 

4.  The  observation  that  large  groups  of  species 
of  widely  different  habits  present  the  same  funda- 
mental plan  of  structure ;  and  that  parts  of  the 
same  animal  or  plant,  the  functions  of  which  are 
very  different,  likewise  exhibit  modifications  of  a 
common  plan. 

5.  The  observation  of  the  existence  of  structures, 
in  a  rudimentary  and  apparently  useless  condition, 
in  one  species  of  a  group,  which  are  fully  devel- 
oped and  have  definite  functions  in  other  species 
of  the  same  group. 

6.  The  observation  of  the  effects   of  varying 
conditions  in  modifying  living  organisms. 

7.  The  observation  of  the  facts  of  geographical 
distribution. 

8.  The  observation  of  the  facts  of  the  geological 
succession  of  the  forms  of  life. 


206  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  VI 

1.  Notwithstanding  the  elaborate  disguise  which 
fear  of  the  powers  that  were  led  Descartes  to 
throw  over  his  real  opinions,  it  is  impossible  to 
read  the  "  Principes  de  la  Philosophic  "  without 
acquiring  the  conviction  that  this  great  philosopher 
held  that  the  physical  world  and  all  things  in  it, 
whether  living  or  not  living,  have  originated  by  a 
process  of  evolution,  due  to  the  continuous  opera- 
tion of  purely  physical  causes,  out  of  a  primitive 
relatively  formless  matter.1 

The  following  passage  is  especially  instructive : — 

"Et  tant  s'en  faut  que  je  veuille  que  Ton  croie  toutes  les 
choses  que  j'ecrirai,  que  meme  je  pretends  en  proposer  ici  quelques 
unes  que  je  crois  absolument  etre  fausses  ;  a  savoir,  je  ne  doute 
point  que  le  monde  n'ait  etc  cree  au  commencement  avec  autant 
de  perfection  qu'il  en  a  ;  en  sorte  que  le  soleil,  la  terre,  la  lune, 
et  les  etoiles  ont  ete  des  lors  ;  et  que  la  terre  n'a  pas  eu  seulement 
en  soi  les  sentiences  des  plantes,  mais  que  les  plantes  meme  en 
ont  couvert  une  partie  ;  et  qu*  Adam  et  Eve  n'ont  pas  ete  crees 
enfans  mais  en  age  d'hommes  parfaits.  La  religion  chretienne 
veut  que  nous  le  croyons  ainsi,  et  la  raison  naturelle  nous  persuade 
entierement  cette  verite  ;  car  si  nous  considerons  la  toute  puis- 
sance de  Dieu,  nous  devons  juger  que  tout  ce  qu'il  a  faitaeu  des 
le  commencement  toute  la  perfection  qu'il  devoit  avoir.  Mais 
neanmoins,  comme  on  connditroit  beaucoup  mieux  quelle  a  ete  la 
nature  d'Adam  et  celle  des  arbres  de  Paradis  si  on  avoit  examine 
comment  les  enfants  se  forment  peu  apeudans  le  ventre  de  leurs 
meres  et  comment  les  plantes  sortent  de  leurs  semences,  que  si 
on  avoit  seulemeni  considere  quels  ils  ont  ete  quand  Dieu  les  a 
crees :  tout  de  meme,  nous  ferons  mieux  entendre  quelle  est 

1  As  Buffbn  has  well  said  : — "  L'idee  de  ramener  I'explication 
de  tous  les  phenomenes  a  des  principes  mecaniques  est  assure- 
ment  grande  et  belle,  ce  pas  est  le  plus  bardi  qu'on  peut  faire  en 
philosophic,  etc'est  Descartes  qui  1'a  fait." — I.e.  p.  50. 


VI  EVOLUTION   IX  BIOLOGY  207 

generalemcnt  la  nature  de  toutes  les  choses  qui  sont  au  monde  si 
nous  pouvons  imaginer  quelques  principes  qui  soient  fort  intelli- 
gibles  et  fort  simples,  desquels  nous  puissions  voir  clairement  que 
les  astres  et  la  terre  et  enfin  tout  ce  monde  visible  auroit  pu  etre 
produit  ainsi  que  de  quelques  semences  (bien  que  nous  sachions 
qu'il  n'a  pas  ete  produit  en  cette  fa^on)  que  si  nous  la  decrivions 
seulement  comme  il  est,  ou  bien  comme  iious  croyons  qu'il  a  ete 
cree.  Et  parceque  je  pense  avoir  trouve  des  principes  qui  sont 
tels,  je  tacherai  ici  de  les  expliquer."  1 

If  we  read  between  the  lines  of  this  singular 
exhibition  of  force  of  one  kind  and  weakness  of 
another,  it  is  clear  that  Descartes  believed  that  he 
had  divined  the  mode  in  which  the  physical  uni- 
verse had  been  evolved ;  and  the  "  Traite  de 
1'Homrae,"  and  the  essay  "  Sur  les  Passions  "  afford 
abundant  additional  evidence  that  he  sought  for, 
and  thought  he  had  found,  an  explanation  of  the 
phenomena  of  physical  life  by  deduction  from 
purely  physical  laws. 

Spinoza  abounds  in  the  same  sense,  and  is  as 
usual  perfectly  candid — 

"  Naturae  leges  et  regulse,  secundum  quas  omnia  fiunt  et  ex 
unis  formis  in  alias  mutantur,  sunt  ubique  et  semper  eadem."  3 

Leibnitz's  doctrine  of  continuity  necessarily  led 
him  in  the  same  direction  ;  and,  of  the  infinite 
multitude  of  monads  with  which  he  peopled  the 
world,  each  is  supposed  to  be  the  focus  of  an  end- 
less process  of  evolution  and  involution.  In  the 

1  Principes  dc  la  Philosophic,  Troisieme  partie,  §  45. 
*  EJticcs,  Pars  tertia,  Prafatio. 


208  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

"  Protogsea,"  xxvi.,  Leibnitz  distinctly  suggests  the 
mutability  of  species — 

"Alii  mirantur  in  saxis  passim  species  videri  quasvel  in  orbe 
cognito,  vel  saltern  in  vicinis  locis  frustra  quan-as.  '  Ita  Cornua 
Ammonis,'  qua?  ex  nautilorum  numero  habeantur,  passim  et 
forma  et  magnitudine  (nam  et  pedali  diametro  aliquando  reperiun- 
tur)  ab  omnibus  illis  naturis  discrepare  dicunt,  quas  prrebet  mare. 
Sed  quis  absconditos  ejus  recessus  aut  subterraneas  abysses  per- 
vestigavit  ?  quam  multa  nobis  animalia  antea  ignota  effort  novus 
orbis?  Et  credibile  est  per  magnas  illas  conversiones  etiarn 
animalium  species  plurimum  immutatas. " 

Thus,  in  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
the  seed  was  sown  which  has,  at  intervals,  brought 
forth  recurrent  crops  of  evolutional  hypotheses, 
based,  more  or  less  completely,  on  general 
reasonings. 

Among  the  earliest  of  these  speculations  is 
that  put  forward  by  Benoit  de  Maillet  in  his 
"  Telliamed,"  which,  though  printed  in  1735,  was 
not  published  until  twenty-three  years  later. 
Considering  that  this  book  was  written  before  the 
time  of  Haller,  or  Bonnet,  or  Linnaeus,  or  Hutton, 
it  surely  deserves  more  respectful  consideration 
than  it  usually  receives.  For  De  Maillet  not  only 
has  a  definite  conception  of  the  plasticity  of  living 
things,  and  of  the  production  of  existing  species 
by  the  modification  of  their  predecessors ;  but  he 
clearly  apprehends  the  cardinal  maxim  of  modern 
geological  science,  that  the  explanation  of  the 
structure  of  the  globe  is  to  be  sought  in  the 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  209 

deductive  application  to  geological  phenomena  of 
the  principles  established  inductively  by  the  study 
of  the  present  course  of  nature.  Somewhat  later, 
Maupertuis1  suggested  a  curious  hypothesis  as  to 
the  causes  of  variation,  which  he  thinks  may  be 
sufficient  to  account  for  the  origin  of  all  animals 
from  a  single  pair.  Robinet  2  followed  out  much 
the  same  line  of  thought  as  De  Maillet,  but  less 
soberly  ;  and  Bonnet's  speculations  in  the  "  Paling- 
(Snesie,"  which  appeared  in  1769,  have  already 
been  mentioned.  Buffon  (1753  1778),  at  first  a 
partisan  of  the  absolute  immutability  of  species, 
subsequently  appears  to  have  believed  that  larger 
or  smaller  groups  of  species  have  been  produced 
by  the  modification  of  a  primitive  stock  ;  but  he 
contributed  nothing  to  the  general  doctrine  of 
evolution. 

Erasmus  Darwin  ("Zoonomia,"  1794),  though  a 
zealous  evolutionist,  can  hardly  be  said  to  have 
made  any  real  advance  on  his  predecessors ;  and, 
notwithstanding  that  Goethe  (1791-4)  had  the 
advantage  of  a  wide  knowledge  of  morphological 
facts,  and  a  true  insight  into  their  signification, 
while  he  threw  all  the  power  of  a  great  poet  into 
the  expression  of  his  conceptions,  it  may  be  ques- 
tioned whether  he  supplied  the  doctrine  of  evolu- 

1  Systeme  dc  la  Nature,  "  Essai  snr  la  Formation  des  Corps 
Organists,"  1751,  xiv. 

-  Considerations  Philosophiques  sur  la  gradation  nafurdlc  tfrs 
formes  dc  I'gtre  ;  ou  Ics  cssais  dc  la  nature  qui  apprend  a  faire 
I'Junnmc,  1768. 


210  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

tion  with  a  firmer  scientific  basis  than  it  already 
possessed.  Moreover,  whatever  the  value  of 
Goethe's  labours  in  that  field,  they  were  not 
published  before  1820,  long  after  evolutionism  had 
taken  a  new  departure  from  the  works  of  Trevir- 
anus  and  Lamarck — the  first  of  its  advocates  who 
were  equipped  for  their  task  with  the  needful 
large  and  accurate  knowledge  of  the  phenomena  of 
life,  as  a  whole.  It  is  remarkable  that  each  of 
these  writers  seems  to  have  been  led,  independ- 
ently and  contemporaneously,  to  invent  the  same 
name  of  "  Biology  "  for  the  science  of  the  pheno- 
mena of  life  ;  and  thus,  following  Buffon,  to  have 
recognised  the  essential  unity  of  these  phenomena, 
and  their  contradistinction  from  those  of  inanimate 
nature.  And  it  is  hard  to  say  whether  Lamarck 
or  Treviranus  has  the  priority  in  propounding  the 
main  thesis  of  the  doctrine  of  evolution ;  for 
though  the  first  volume  of  Treviranus's  "  Biologie  " 
appeared  only  in  1802,  he  says,  in  the  preface  to 
his  later  work,  the  "  Erscheinungen  und  Gesetze 
des  organischen  Lebens,"  dated  1831,  that  he 
wrote  the  first  volume  of  the  "  Biologie  "  "  nearly 
five-and-thirty  years  ago,"  or  about  1796. 

Now,  in  1794,  there  is  evidence  that  Lamarck 
held  doctrines  which  present  a  striking  contrast  to 
those  which  are  to  be  found  in  the  "  Philosophic 
Zoologique,"  as  the  following  passages  show  : — 

"  685.  Quoique  mon  unique  objet  dans  cet  article  n'ait  et6  qua 
de  trailer  de  la  cause  physique  de  1'entretien  de  la  vie  des  etres 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  211 

organiques,  malgre  cela  j'ai  ose  avancer  en  debutant,  que  1'exist- 
ence  de  ces  etres  etonnants  n'appartiennent  nullement  a  la 
nature  ;  que  tout  ce  qu'on  peut  entendre  par  le  mot  nature,  ne 
pouvoit  donner  la  vie,  c'est-a-dire,  que  toutes  les  qualites  de  la 
matiere,  jointes  a  toutes  les  circonstances  possibles,  et  meme  a 
1'activite  repandue  dans  1'uuivers,  ne  pouvaient  point  produire 
un  etre  muni  du  mouvement  organique,  capable  de  reproduire 
son  semblable,  et  sujet  a  la  mort. 

"686.  Tous  les  individus  de  cette  nature,  qui  existent,  pro- 
viennent  d'individus  semblables  qui  tous  ensemble  constituent 
1' espece  entiere.  Or,  je  crois  qu'il  est  aussi  impossible  a  rhomme 
de  connoitre  la  cause  physique  du  premier  individu  de  chaque 
espece,  que  d'assigner  aussi  physiquement  la  cause  de  1'existence 
de  la  matiere  ou  de  1'univers  entier.  C'est  au  moins  ce  que  le 
resultat  de  mes  connaissances  et  de  mes  reflexions  me  portent  a 
penser.  S'il  existe  beaucoup  de  varietes  produites  par  1'effet  des 
circonstances,  ces  varietes  ne  denaturent  point  les  especes  ;  mais 
on  se  trompe,  sans  doute  souvent,  en  indiquant  comme  espece,  ce 
qui  n'est  que  variete  ;  et  alors  je  sens  que  cette  erreur  peut  tirer 
a  consequence  dans  les  raisonnements  que  Ton  fait  sur  cette 
matiere.  "1 

The  first  three  volumes  of  Treviranus's  "  Bio- 
logie,"  which  contain  his  general  views  of 
evolution,  appeared  between  1802  and  1805.  The 
"  Recherches  sur  1'  organisation  des  corps  vivants," 
in  which  the  outlines  of  Lamarck's  doctrines  are 
given,  was  published  in  1802  ;  but  the  full  develop- 

1  Recherches  sur  les  causes  den  principaux  faits  physiques, 
par  J.  B.  Lamarck.  Paris.  Secondo  aunee  de  la  Republique. 
In  the  preface,  Lamarck  says  that  the  work  was  written  in  1776, 
and  presented  to  the  Academy  in  1780  ;  but  it  was  not  published 
before  I794,and,  at  that  time,  it  presumably  expressed  Lamarck's 
mature  views.  It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  brought 
about  the  change  of  opinion  manifested  in  the  liecherches  sur 
I' organisation  des  corps  vivants,  published  only  seven  years 
later. 


212  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

ment  of  his  views,  in  the  "  Philosophie 
Zoologique,"  did  not  take  place  until  1809. 

The  "  Biologie  "  and  the  "  Philosophie  Zoolo- 
gique "  are  both  very  remarkable  productions,  and 
are  still  worthy  of  attentive  study,  but  they  fell 
upon  evil  times.  The  vast  authority  of  Cuvier 
was  employed  in  suppoi't  of  the  traditionally 
respectable  hypotheses  of  special  creation  and  of 
catastrophism  ;  and  the  wild  speculations  of  the 
"  Discours  sur  les  Revolutions  de  la  Surface  du 
Globe  "  were  held  to  be  models  of  sound  scientific 
thinking,  while  the  really  much  more  sober  and 
philosophical  hypotheses  of  the  "  Hydrogeologie  " 
were  scouted.  For  many  years  it  was  the  fashion 
to  speak  of  Lamarck  with  ridicule,  while  Trevir- 
anus  was  altogether  ignored. 

Nevertheless,  the  work  had  been  done.  The 
conception  of  evolution  was  henceforward  irrepres- 
sible, and  it  incessantly  reappears,  in  one  shape  or 
another,1  up  to  the  year  1858,  when  Mr.  Darwin 
and  Mr.  Wallace  published  their  "Theory  of 
Natural  Selection."  The  "  Origin  of  Species  " 
appeared  in  1859 ;  and  it  is  within  the  knowledge 
of  all  whose  memories  go  back  to  that  time,  that, 
henceforward,  the  doctrine  of  evolution  has 
assumed  a  position  and  acquired  an  importance 
which  it  never  before  possessed.  In  the  "  Origin 
of  Species,"  and  in  his  other  numerous  and 

1  Sec  the  "  Historical  Sketch  "  prefixed  to  the  last  edition  of 
the  Origin  of  Species. 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  213 

important  contributions  to  the  solution  of  the 
problem  of  biological  evolution,  Mr.  Darwin  con- 
fines himself  to  the  discussion  of  the  causes  which 
have  brought  about  the  present  condition  of  living 
matter,  assuming  such  matter  to  have  once  come 
into  existence.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Spencer  x 
and  Professor  Haeckel  2  have  dealt  with  the  whole 
problem  of  evolution.  The  profound  and  vigorous 
writings  of  Mr.  Spencer  embody  the  spirit  of 
Descartes  in  the  knowledge  of  our  own  day,  and 
may  be  regarded  as  the  "  Principes  de  la 
Philosophic"  of  the  nineteenth  century;  while, 
whatever  hesitation  may  not  unfrequently  be  felt 
by  less  daring  minds,  in  following  Haeckel  in  many 
of  his  speculations,  his  attempt  to  systematise  the 
doctrine  of  evolution  and  to  exhibit  its  influence 
as  the  central  thought  of  modern  biology,  cannot 
fail  to  have  a  far-reaching  influence  on  the  progress 
of  science. 

If  we  seek  for  the  reason  of  the  difference 
between  the  scientific  position  of  the  doctrine  of 
evolution  a  century  ago,  and  that  which  it  occupies 
now,  we  shall  find  it  in  the  great  accumulation 
of  facts,  the  several  classes  of  which  have  been 
enumerated  above,  under  the  second  to  the  eighth 
heads.  For  those  which  are  grouped  under  the 
second  to  the  seventh  of  these  classes,  respectively, 
have  a  clear  significance  on  the  hypothesis  of 

1  First  Principles,  and  Principles  of  Riolojy,  1860-1864. 
*  Gencrcllc  Morplwloji.-,  1866. 


214  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  VI 

evolution,  while  they  are  unintelligible  if  that 
hypothesis  be  denied.  And  those  of  the  eighth 
group  are  not  only  unintelligible  without  the 
assumption  of  evolution,  but  can  be  proved  never 
to  be  discordant  with  that  hypothesis,  while,  in 
some  cases,  they  are  exactly  such  as  the  hypothesis 
requires.  The  demonstration  of  these  assertions 
would  require  a  volume,  but  the  general  nature  of 
the  evidence  on  which  they  rest  may  be  briefly 
indicated. 

2.  The  accurate  investigation  of  the  lowest 
forms  of  animal  life,  commenced  by  Leeuwenhoek 
and  Swammerdam,  and  continued  by  the  remark- 
able labours  of  Reaumur,  Trembley,  Bonnet,  and  a 
host  of  other  observers,  in  the  latter  part  of  the 
seventeenth  and  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth 
centuries,  drew  the  attention  of  biologists  to  the 
gradation  in  the  complexity  of  organisation  which 
is  presented  by  living  beings,  and  culminated  in 
the  doctrine  of  the  "  echelle  des  etres,"  so  power- 
fully and  clearly  stated  by  Bonnet ;  and,  before 
him,  adumbrated  by  Locke  and  by  Leibnitz.  In 
the  then  state  of  knowledge,  it  appeared  that  all 
the  species  of  animals  and  plants  could  be 
arranged  in  one  series  ;  in  such  a  manner  that,  by 
insensible  gradations,  the  mineral  passed  into  the 
plant,  the  plant  into  the  polype,  the  polype  into 
the  worm,  and  so,  through  gradually  higher  forms 
of  life,  to  man,  at  the  summit  of  the  animated 
world. 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  215 

But.,  as  knowledge  advanced,  this  conception 
ceased  to  be  tenable  in  the  crude  form  in  which 
it  was  first  put  forward.  Taking  into  account 
existing;  animals  and  plants  alone,  it  became 
obvious  that  they  fell  into  groups  which  were 
more  or  less  sharply  separated  from  one  another ; 
and,  moreover,  that  even  the  species  of  a  genus 
can  hardly  ever  be  arranged  in  linear  series. 
Their  natural  resemblances  and  differences  are 
only  to  be  expressed  by  disposing  them  as  if  they 
were  branches  springing  from  a  common  hypo- 
thetical centre. 

Lamarck,  while  affirming  the  verbal  proposition 
that  animals  form  a  single  series,  was  forced  by  his 
vast  acquaintance  with  the  details  of  zoology  to 
limit  the  assertion  to  such  a  series  as  may  be 
formed  out  of  the  abstractions  constituted  by  the 
common  characters  of  each  group.1 

Cuvier  on  anatomical,  and  Von  Baer  on  embryo- 
logical  grounds,  made  the  further  step  of  proving 
that,  even  in  this  limited  sense,  animals  cannot  be 
arranged  in  a  single  series,  but  that  there  are 
several  distinct  plans  of  organisation  to  be  observed 
among  them,  no  one  of  which,  in  its  highest  and 
most  complicated  modification,  leads  to  any  of  the 
others. 

1  "II  s'agit  done  de  prouver  que  la  serie  qui  constitue 
P&helle  aniniale  reside  cssentiellcmcnt  dans  la  distribution  des 
masses  principales  qui  la  composent  et  non  dans  celle  des  especes 
ni  meme  toujours  dans  celle  des  genres." — Philosophic  Zoologique, 
chap.  v. 

43 


216  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

The  conclusions  enunciated  by  Cuvier  and  Von 
Baer  have  been  confirmed,  in  principle,  by  all 
subsequent  research  into  the  structure  of  animals 
and  plants.  But  the  effect  of  the  adoption  of 
these  conclusions  has  been  rather  to  substitute  a 
new  metaphor  for  that  of  Bonnet  than  to  abolish 
the  conception  expressed  by  it.  Instead  of  regard- 
ing living  things  as  capable  of  arrangement  in  one 
series  like  the  steps  of  a  ladder,  the  results  of 
modern  investigation  compel  us  to  dispose  them 
as  if  they  were  the  twigs  and  branches  of  a  tree. 
The  ends  of  the  twigs  represent  individuals,  the 
smallest  groups  of  twigs  species,  larger  groups 
genera,  and  so  on,  until  we  arrive  at  the  source  of 
all  these  ramifications  of  the  main  branch,  which 
is  represented  by  a  common  plan  of  structure.  At 
the  present  moment,  it  is  impossible  to  draw  up 
any  definition,  based  on  broad  anatomical  or 
developmental  characters,  by  which  any  one  of 
Cuvier's  great  groups  shall  be  separated  from  all 
the  rest.  On  the  contrary,  the  lower  members  of 
each  tend  to  converge  towards  the  lower  members 
of  all  the  others.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
vegetable  world.  The  apparently  clear  distinction 
between  flowering  and  flowerless  plants  has  been 
broken  down  by  the  series  of  gradations  between 
the  two  exhibited  by  the  Lycopodiacecc,  Rhizo- 
carpece,  and  Gymnospermccv.  The  groups  of  Fimgi, 
Lichenes,  and  Algcc  have  completely  run  into  one 
another,  and,  when  the  lowest  forms  of  each  are 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  217 

alone  considered,  even  the  animal  and  vegetable 
kingdoms  cease  to  have  a  definite  frontier. 

If  it  is  permissible  to  speak  of  the  relations  of 
living  forms  to  one  another  metaphorically,  the 
similitude  chosen  must  undoubtedly  be  that  of  a 
common  root,  whence  two  main  trunks,  one  repre- 
senting the  vegetable  and  one  the  animal  world, 
spring;  and,  each  dividing  into  a  few  main 
branches,  these  subdivide  into  multitudes  of 
branchlets  and  these  into  smaller  groups  of 
twigs. 

As  Lamarck  has  well  said — l 

"  II  n'y  a  que  ceux  qui  se  sont  longtempsetfortementoccupes 
de  la  determination  des  especes,  ct  qui  ont  consulte  de  riches 
collections,  qui  peuvent  savoir  jusqu'a  quel  point  les  cspece*, 
panni  les  corps  vivants  se  fondent  les  uues  dans  les  autres,  et  qui 
ont  pu  se  eonvaincre  que,  dans  les  parties  oil  nous  voyons  des 
especes  isoles,  cela  n'est  ainsi  que  parcequ'il  nous  en  manque 
d'autresqui  en  sont  plus  voisines  et  que  nous  n'avons  pas  encore 
recueillies. 

"  Je  ne  veux  pas  dire  pour  cela  que  les  animaux  qui  existent 
forment  une  serie  tres-simple  et  partout  egalement  nuancee ; 
mais  je  dis  qu'ils  forment  une  serie  ramense,  irregulierement 
graduee  et  qui  n'a  point  de  discontinuity  dans  ses  parties,  ouqui, 
du  moins,  n'en  a  toujours  pas  eu,  s'il  est  vrai  que,  par  suite  de 
quclques  especes  perdues,  il  s'en  trouve  quelque  part.  II  en 
resulte  que  les  especes  qui  terminent  chaque  rameau  de  la  serie 
gcnerale  tiennent,  au  moins  d'un  cote,  ad'autres  especes  voisines 
qui  se  nuancent  avec  elles.  Voila  ce  que  1'etat  bien  connu  des 
choses  me  met  maintenant  a  portee  de  demontrer.  Je  n'ai 
be.soiu  d'aucune  hypothese  ni  d'aucune  supposition  pour  cela : 
j'en  atteste  tous  les  naturalistes  observateurs. " 

1  Philosophic  Zooloyique,  premiere  partic,  chap.  iii. 


218  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

3.  In  a  remarkable  essay  1  Meckel  remarks — 

"There  is  no  good  physiologist  who  has  not  been  struck  by 
the  observation  that  the  original  form  of  all  organisms  is  one  and 
the  same,  and  that  out  of  this  one  form,  all,  the  lowest  as  well  as 
the  highest,  are  developed  in  such  a  manner  that  the  latter  pass 
through  the  permanent  forms  of  the  former  as  transitory  stages. 
Aristotle,  Haller,  Harvey,  Kielmeyer,  Autenrieth,  and  many 
others,  have  either  made  this  observation  incidentally,  or, 
especially  the  latter,  have  drawn  particular  attention  to  it, 
and  deduced  therefrom  results  of  permanent  importance  for 
physiology." 

Meckel  proceeds  to  exemplify  the  thesis,  that 
the  lower  forms  of  animals  represent  stages  in 
the  course  of  the  development  of  the  higher,  with 
a  large  series  of  illustrations. 

After  comparing  the  Salamanders  and  the 
perennibranchiate  Urodda  with  the  Tadpoles  and 
the  Frogs,  and  enunciating  the  law  that  the  more 
highly  any  animal  is  organised  the  more  quickly 
does  it  pass  through  the  lower  stages,  Meckel  goes 
on  to  say — 

"  From  these  lowest  Vertebrata  to  the  highest,  and  to  the 
highest  forms  among  these,  the  comparison  between  the  embry- 
onic conditions  of  the  higher  animals  and  the  adult  states  of  the 
lower  can  be  more  completely  and  thoroughly  instituted  than  if 
the  survey  is  extended  to  the  Invertebrata,  inasmuch  as  the  latter 
are  in  many  respects  constructed  upon  an  altogether  too  dissimilar 
type  ;  indeed  they  often  differ  from  one  another  far  more  than 
the  lowest  vertebrate  does  from  the  highest  mammal ;  yet  the 

1  "Entwurf  einer  Darstellung  der  zwischcn  dem  Embryozus- 
tande  der  hbheren  Thicre  und  dem  permanenten  der  niederen. 
stattfmdenden  Parallele,"  Beylragezur  Vergleichcndcn  Anatomic, 
Bd.  ii.  1811. 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  219 

following  pages  will  show  that  the  comparison  may  also  be 
extended  to  them  with  interest.  In  fact,  there  is  a  period  when, 
as  Aristotle  long  ago  said,  the  embryo  of  the  highest  animal 
has  the  form  of  a  mere  worm  ;  and,  devoid  of  internal  and 
external  organisation,  is  merely  an  almost  structureless  lump  of 
polype  substance.  Notwithstanding  the  origin  of  organs,  it 
still  for  a  certain  time,  by  reason  of  its  want  of  an  internal  bony 
skeleton,  remains  worm  and  mollusk,  and  only  later  enters  into 
the  series  of  the  Vertebrata,  although  traces  of  the  vertebral 
column  even  in  the  earliest  periods  testify  its  claim  to  a  place 
in  that  series." — Op.  cit.  pp.  4,  5. 

If  Meckel's  proposition  is  so  far  qualified,  that 
the  comparison  of  adult  with  embryonic  forms  is 
restricted  within  the  limits  of  one  type  of  organi- 
sation ;  and,  if  it  is  further  recollected  that  the 
resemblance  between  the  permanent  lower  form 
and  the  embryonic  stage  of  a  higher  form  is  not 
special  but  general,  it  is  in  entire  accordance  with 
modern  embryology ;  although  there  is  no  branch 
of  biology  which  has  grown  so  largely,  and  im- 
proved its  methods  so  much,  since  Meckel's  time, 
as  this.  In  its  original  form,  the  doctrine  of 
"  arrest  of  development,"  as  advocated  by  Geoffrey 
Saint-Hilaire  and  Serres,  was  no  doubt  an  over- 
statement of  the  case.  It  is.  not  true,  for  example, 
that  a  fish  is  a  reptile  arrested  in  its  development, 
or  that  a  reptile  was  ever  a  fish  :  but  it  is  true 
that  the  reptile  embryo,  at  one  stage  of  its 
development,  is  an  organism  which,  if  it  had  an 
independent  existence,  must  be  classified  among 
fishes ;  and  all  the  organs  of  the  reptile  pass,  in 
the  course  of  their  development,  through  conditions 


220  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  vi 

which  are  closely  analogous  to  those  which  are 
permanent  in  some  fishes. 

4.  That  branch  of  biology  which  is  termed  Mor- 
phology is  a  commentary  upon,  and  expansion  of, 
the  proposition  that  widely  different  animals  or 
plants,  and  widely  different  parts  of  animals  or 
plants,    are    constructed    upon    the    same    plan. 
From  the  rough  comparison  of  the  skeleton  of  a 
bird  with  that  of  a  man  by  Belon,  in  the  sixteenth 
century    (to  go   no   farther   back),  down   to   the 
theory  of  the  limbs  and  the  theory  of  the  skull  at 
the  present  day  ;  or,  from  the  first  demonstration  o-f 
the  homologies  of  the  parts  of  a  flower  by  C.  F. 
Wolff,   to  the  present  elaborate  analysis  of  the 
floral   organs,    morphology   exhibits    a   continual 
advance  towards  the  demonstration  of  a  funda- 
mental unity  among  the   seeming  diversities  of 
living  structures.     And   this   demonstration   has 
been  completed  by  the  final  establishment  of  the 
cell  theory,  which  involves  the  admission    of   a 
primitive  conformity,  not  only  of  all  the  elemen- 
tary structures  in  animals  and  plants  respectively, 
but  of  those  in  the  one  of  these  great  divisions 
of  living  things  with  those  in  the   other.     No  a 
priori  difficulty  can  be  said  to  stand  in  the  way  of 
evolution,  when  it  can  be  shown  that  all  animals 
and  all  plants  proceed  by  modes  of  development, 
which  are  similar  in  principle,  from  a  fundamental 
protoplasmic  material. 

5.  The  innumerable  cases  of  structures,  which  are 


TI  EVOLUTION    IN  BIOLOGY  221 

rudimentary  and  apparently  useless,  in  species, 
the  close  allies  of  which  possess  well-developed 
and  functionally  important  homologous  structures, 
are  readily  intelligible  on  the  theory  of  evolution, 
while  it  is  hard  to  conceive  their  raison  d'etre  on 
any  other  hypothesis.  However,  a  cautious  rea- 
soner  will  probably  rather  explain  such  cases 
deductively  from  the  doctrine  of  evolution  than 
endeavour  to  support  the  doctrine  of  evolution  by 
them.  For  it  is  almost  impossible  to  prove  that 
any  structure,  however  rudimentary,  is  useless — 
that  is  to  say,  that  it  plays  no  part  whatever  in 
the  economy ;  and,  if  it  is  in  the  slightest  degree 
useful,  there  is  no  reason  why,  on  the  hypothesis 
of  direct  creation,  it  should  not  have  been  created. 
Nevertheless,  double-edged  as  is  the  argument 
from  rudimentary  organs,  there  is  probably  none 
which  has  produced  a  greater  effect  in  promoting 
the  general  acceptance  of  the  theory  of  evo- 
lution. 

6.  The  older  advocates  of  evolution  sought  for  the 
causes  of  the  process  exclusively  in  the  influence  of 
varying  conditions,  such  as  climate  and  station,  or 
hybridisation,  upon  living  forms.  Even  Treviranus 
has  got  no  farther  than  this  point.  Lamarck  in- 
troduced the  conception  of  the  action  of  an  animal 
on  itself  as  a  factor  in  producing  modification. 
Starting  from  the  well-known  fact  that  the 
habitual  use  of  a  limb  tends  to  develop  the  muscles 
of  the  limb,  and  to  produce  a  greater  and  greater 


222  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  VI 

facility  in  using  it,  he  made  the  general  assumption, 
that  the  effort  of  an  animal  to  exert  an  organ  in  a. 
given  direction  tends  to  develop  the  organ  in  that 
direction.  But  a  little  consideration  showed  that, 
though  Lamarck  had  seized  what,  as  far  it  goes,  is 
a  true  cause  of  modification,  it  is  a  cause  the  actual 
effects  of  which  are  wholly  inadequate  to  account 
for  any  considerable  modification  in  animals,  and 
which  can  have  no  influence  at  all  in  the  vegetable 
world ;  and  probably  nothing  contributed  so  much 
to  discredit  evolution,  in  the  early  part  of  this 
century,  as  the  floods  of  easy  ridicule  which  were 
poured  upon  this  part  of  Lamarck's  speculation. 
The  theory  of  natural  selection,  or  survival  of  the 
fittest,  was  suggested  by  Wells  in  1813,  and 
further  elaborated  by  Matthew  in  1831.  But  the 
pregnant  suggestions  of  these  writers  remained 
practically  unnoticed  and  forgotten,  until  the  theory 
was  independently  devised  and  promulgated  by 
Darwin  and  Wallace  in  1858,  and  the  effect  of  its 
publication  was  immediate  and  profound. 

Those  who  were  unwilling  to  accept  evolution, 
without  better  grounds  than  such  as  are  offered  by 
Lamarck,  or  the  author  of  that  particularly  un- 
satisfactory book,  the  '  Vestiges  of  the  Natural 
History  of  the  Creation,"  and  who  therefore 
preferred  to  suspend  their  judgment  on  the 
question,  found,  in  the  principle  of  selective 
breeding,  pursued  in  all  its  applications  with 
marvellous  knowledge  and  skill  by  Mr.  Darwin,  a 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  223 

valid  explanation  of  the  occurrence  of  varieties  and 
races ;  and  they  saw  clearly  that,  if  the  explanation 
would  apply  to  species,  it  would  not  only  solve  the 
problem  of  their  evolution,  but  that  it  would  ac- 
count for  the  facts  of  teleology,  as  well  as  for  those 
of  morphology  ;  and  for  the  persistence  of  some 
forms  of  life  unchanged  through  long  epochs  of 
time,  while  others  undergo  comparatively  rapid 
metamorphosis. 

How  far  "  natural  selection  "  suffices  for  the  pro- 
duction of  species  remains  to  be  seen.  Few  can 
doubt  that,  if  not  the  whole  cause,  it  is  a  very  im- 
portant factor  in  that  operation ;  and  that  it  must 
play  a  great  part  in  the  sorting  out  of  varieties 
into  those  which  are  transitory  and  those  which 
are  permanent. 

But  the  causes  and  conditions  of  variation  have 
yet  to  be  thoroughly  explored  ;  and  the  importance 
of  natural  selection  will  not  be  impaired,  even  if 
further  inquiries  should  prove  that  variability 
is  definite,  and  is  determined  in  certain  directions 
rather  than  in  others,  by  conditions  inherent  in 
that  which  varies.  It  is  quite  conceivable  that 
every  species  tends  to  produce  varieties  of  a 
limited  number  and  kind,  and  that  the  effect  of 
natural  selection  is  to  favour  the  development  of 
some  of  these,  while  it  opposes  the  development 
of  others  along  their  predetermined  lines  of  modi- 
fication. 

7.  No    truths  brought  to  light   by    biological 


224  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY  vi 

investigation  were  better  calculated  to  inspire 
distrust  of  the  dogmas  intruded  upon  science  in 
the  name  of  theology,  than  those  which  relate  to 
the  distribution  of  animals  and  plants  on  the 
surface  of  the  earth.  Very  skilful  accommodation 
was  needful,  if  the  limitation  of  sloths  to  South 
America,  and  of  the  ornithorhynchus  to  Australia, 
was  to  be  reconciled  with  the  literal  interpretation 
of  the  history  of  the  deluge ;  and  with  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  existence  of  distinct  provinces  of 
distribution,  any  serious  belief  in  the  peopling  of 
the  world  by  migration  from  Mount  Ararat  came 
to  an  end. 

Under  these  circumstances,  only  one  alternative 
was  left  for  those  who  denied  the  occurrence  of 
evolution — namely,  the  supposition  that  the 
characteristic  animals  and  plants  of  each  great 
province  were  created  as  such,  within  the  limits  in 
which  we  find  them.  And  as  the  hypothesis  of 
"  specific  centres,"  thus  formulated,  was  heterodox 
from  the  theological  point  of  view,  and  unintelli- 
gible under  its  scientific  aspect,  it  may  be  passed 
over  without  further  notice,  as  a  phase  of  transi- 
tion from  the  creational  to  the  evolutional  hypo- 
thesis. 

8.  In  fact,  the  strongest  and  most  conclusive 
arguments  in  favour  of  evolution  are  those  which 
are  based  upon  the  facts  of  geographical,  taken 
in  conjunction  with  those  of  geological,  distri- 
bution. 


VI  EVOLUTION   IN   BIOLOGY  225 

Both  Mr.  Darwin  and  Mr.  Wallace  lay  great 
stress  on  the  close  relation  which  obtains  between 
the  existing  fauna  of  any  region  and  that  of  the 
immediately  antecedent  geological  epoch  in  the 
same  region ;  and  rightly,  for  it  is  in  truth  in- 
conceivable that  there  should  be  no  genetic 
connection  between  the  two.  It  is  possible  to  put 
into  words  the  proposition  that  all  the  animals  and 
plants  of  each  geological  epoch  were  annihilated 
and  that  a  new  set  of  very  similar  forms  was 
created  for  the  next  epoch  ;  but  it  may  be  doubted 
if  any  one  who  ever  tried  to  form  a  distinct  mental 
image  of  this  process  of  spontaneous  generation  on 
the  grandest  scale,  ever  really  succeeded  in  real- 
ising it. 

Within  the  last  twenty  years,  the  attention  of 
the  best  palaeontologists  has  been  withdrawn  from 
the  hodman's  work  of  making  "  new  species  "  of 
fossils,  to  the  scientific  task  of  completing  our 
knowledge  of  individual  species,  and  tracing  out 
the  succession  of  the  forms  presented  by  any 
given  type  in  time. 

Those  who  desire  to  inform  themselves  of  the 
nature  and  extent  of  the  evidence  bearing  on  these 
questions  may  consult  the  works  of  Riitimeyer, 
Gaudry,  Kowalewsky,  Marsh,  and  the  writer  of  the 
present  article.  It  must  suffice,  in  this  place,  to 
say  that  the  successive  forms  of  the  Equine  type 
have  been  fully  worked  out ;  while  those  of  nearly 
all  the  other  existing  types  of  Ungulate  mammals 


22G  EVOLUTION   IN  BIOLOGY 


VI 


and  of  the  Carnivora  have  been  almost  as  closely 
followed  through  the  Tertiary  deposits ;  the  gra- 
dations between  birds  arid  reptiles  have  been 
traced ;  and  the  modifications  undergone  by  the 
Crocodilia,  from  the  Triassic  epoch  to  the  present 
day,  have  been  demonstrated.  On  the  evidence  of 
palaeontology,  the  evolution  of  many  existing  forms 
of  animal  life  from  their  predecessors  is  no  longer 
an  hypothesis,  but  an  historical  fact ;  it  is  only  the 
nature  of  the  physiological  factors  to  which 
that  evolution  is  due  which  is  still  open  to  dis- 
cussion. 

[At  page  209,  the  reference  to  Erasmus  D',rwin  does  not  do 
justice  to  that  ingenious  writer,  who,  in  the  39th  section  of  the 
Zoonomia,  clearly  and  repeatedly  enunciates  the  theory  of  the 
inheritance  of  acquired  modifications.  For  example:  "From 
their  first  rudiment,  or  primordium,  to  the  termination  of  their 
lives,  all  animals  undergo  perpetual  transformations  ;  which  are 
in  part  produced  by  their  own  exertions  in  consequence  of  their 
desires  and  aversions,  of  their  pleasures  and  their  pains,  or  of 
irritation,  or  of  associations  ;  and  many  of  these  acquired  forms 
or  propensities  are  transmitted  to  their  posterity."  Zoonomia  I., 
p.  506.  1893.] 


VII 

THE  COMING  OF  AGE  OF  "  THE  ORIGIN 
OF  SPECIES  " 

[1880] 

MANY  of  you  will  be  familiar  with  the  aspect  of 
this  small  green-covered  book.  It  is  a  copy  of  the 
first  edition  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species,"  and  bears 
the  date  of  its  production — the  1st  of  October 
1859.  Only  a  few  months,  therefore,  are  needed 
to  complete  the  full  tale  of  twenty-one  years  since 
its  birthday. 

Those  whose  memories  carry  them  back  to  this 
time  will  remember  that  the  infant  was  remarkably 
lively,  and  that  a  great  number  of  excellent  per- 
sons mistook  its  manifestations  of  a  vigorous 
individuality  for  mere  naughtiness ;  in  fact  there 
was  a  very  pretty  turmoil  about  its  cradle.  My 
recollections  of  the  period  are  particularly  vivid  ; 
for,  having  conceived  a  tender  affection  for  a  child 
of  what  appeared  to  me  to  be  such  remarkable 
promise,  I  acted  for  some  time  in  the  capacity  of  a 


228  THE   COMING   OF   AGE   OF  vil 

sort  of  under-nurse,  and  thus  came  in  for  my  share 
of  the  storms  which  threatened  the  very  life  of 
the  young  creature.  For  some  years  it  was 
undoubtedly  warm  work ;  but  considering  how 
exceedingly  unpleasant  the  apparition  of  the  new- 
comer must  have  been  to  those  who  did  not  fall  in 
love  with  him  at  first  sight,  I  think  it  is  to  the 
credit  of  our  age  that  the  war  was  not  fiercer,  and 
that  the  more  bitter  and  unscrupulous  forms  of 
opposition  died  away  as  soon  as  they  did. 

I  speak  of  this  period  as  of  something  past  and 
gone,  possessing  merely  an  historical,  I  had  almost 
said  an  antiquarian  interest.  For,  during  the 
second  decade  of  the  existence  of  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  opposition,  though  by  no  means  dead, 
assumed  a  different  aspect.  On  the  part  of  all 
those  who  had  any  reason  to  respect  themselves, 
it  assumed  a  thoroughly  respectful  character.  By 
this  time,  the  dullest  began  to  perceive  that  the 
child  was  not  likely  to  perish  of  any  congenital 
weakness  or  infantile  disorder,  but  was  growing 
into  a  stalwart  personage,  upon  whom  mere  goody 
scoldings  and  threatenings  with  the  birch-rod 
were  quite  thrown  away. 

In  fact,  those  who  have  watched  the  progress  of 
science  within  the  last  ten  years  will  bear  me  out 
to  the  full,  when  I  assert  that  there  is  no  field  of 
biological  inquiry  in  which  the  influence  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species  "  is  not  traceable  ;  the  foremost 
men  of  science  in  every  country  are  either  avowed 


VII  "THE   OETGIN   OF   SPECIES"  229 

champions  of  its  leading  doctrines,  or  at  any  rate 
abstain  from  opposing  them  ;  a  host  of  young  and 
ardent  investigators  seek  for  and  find  inspiration 
and  guidance  in  Mr.  Darwin's  great  work  ;  and  the 
general  doctrine  of  evolution,  to  one  side  of  which 
it  gives  expression,  obtains,  in  the  phenomena  of 
biology,  a  firm  base  of  operations  whence  it  may 
conduct  its  conquest  of  the  whole  realm  of  Nature. 

History  warns  us,  however,  that  it  is  the  cus- 
tomary fate  of  new  truths  to  begin  as  heresies  and 
to  end  as  superstitions  ;  and,  as  matters  now  stand, 
it  is  hardly  rash  to  anticipate  that,  in  another 
twenty  years,  the  new  generation,  educated  under 
the  influences  of  the  present  day,  will  be  in  danger 
of  accepting  the  main  doctrines  of  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  with  as  little  reflection,  and  it  may  be 
with  as  little  justification,  as  so  many  of  our  con- 
temporaries, twenty  years  ago,  rejected  them. 

Against  any  such  a  consummation  let  us  all 
devoutly  pray ;  for  the  scientific  spirit  is  of  more 
value  than  its  products,  and  irrationally  held 
truths  may  be  more  harmful  than  reasoned  errors. 
Now  the  essence  of  the  scientific  spirit  is  criticism. 
It  tells  us  that  whenever  a  doctrine  claims  our 
assent  we  should  reply,  Take  it  if  you  can  compel 
it.  The  struggle  for  existence  holds  as  much  in 
the  intellectual  as  in  the  physical  world.  A  theory 
is  a  species  of  thinking,  and  its  right  to  exist  is 
coextensive  with  its  power  of  resisting  extinction 
by  its  rivals. 


230  THE  COMING  OF  AGE   OF  VII 

From  tins  point  of  view,  it  appears  to  me  that 
it  would  be  but  a  poor  way  of  celebrating  the 
Coming  of  Age  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species,"  were  I 
merely  to  dwell  upon  the  facts,  undoubted  and  re- 
markable as  they  are,  of  its  far-reaching  influence 
and  of  the  great  following  of  ardent  disciples  who 
are  occupied  in  spreading  and  developing  its 
doctrines.  Mere  insanities  and  inanities  have 
before  now  swollen  to  portentous  size  in  the  course 
of  twenty  years.  Let  us  rather  ask  this  prodigious 
change  in  opinion  to  justify  itself :  let  us  inquire 
whether  anything  has  happened  since  1859,  which 
will  explain,  on  rational  grounds,  why  so  many 
are  worshipping  that  which  they  burned,  and  burn- 
ing that  which  they  worshipped.  It  is  only  in 
this  way  that  we  shall  acquire  the  means  of 
judging  whether  the  movement  we  have  witnessed 
is  a  mere  eddy  of  fashion,  or  truly  one  with  the 
irreversible  current  of  intellectual  progress,  and, 
like  it,  safe  from  retrogressive  reaction. 

Every  belief  is  the  product  of  two  factors  :  the 
first  is  the  slate  of  the  mind  to  which  the  evidence 
in  favour  of  that  belief  is  presented ;  and  the 
second  is  the  logical  cogency  of  the  evidence  itself. 
In  both  these  respects,  the  history  of  biological 
science  during  the  last  twenty  years  appears  to  me 
to  afford  an  ample  explanation  of  the  change 
which  has  taken  place  ;  and  a  brief  consideration 
of  the  salient  events  of  that  history  will  enable  us 
to  understand  why,  if  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  ap- 


Vii  "THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  "  231 

peared  now,  it  would  meet  with  a  very  different 
reception  from  that  which  greeted  it  in  1859. 

One-and-twenty  years  ago,  in  spite  of  the  work 
commenced  by  Hutton  and  continued  with  rare 
skill  and  patience  by  Lyell,  the  dominant  view  of 
the  past  history  of  the  earth  was  catastrophic. 
Great  and  sudden  physical  revolutions,  wholesale 
creations  and  extinctions  of  living  beings,  were  the 
ordinary  machinery  of  the  geological  epic  brought 
into  fashion  by  the  misapplied  genius  of  Cuvier. 
It  was  gravely  maintained  and  taught  that  the 
end  of  every  geological  epoch  was  signalised  by  a 
cataclysm,  by  which  every  living  being  on  the 
globe  was  swept  away,  to  be  replaced  by  a  brand- 
new  creation  when  the  world  returned  to  quies- 
cence. A  scheme  of  nature  which  appeared  to  be 
modelled  on  the  likeness  of  a  succession  of  rubbers 
of  whist,  at  the  end  of  each  of  which  the  players 
upset  the  table  and  called  for  a  new  pack,  did  not 
seem  to  shock  anybody. 

I  may  be  wrong,  but  I  doubt  if,  at  the  present 
time,  there  is  a  single  responsible  representative 
of  these  opinions  left.  The  progress  of  scientific 
geology  has  elevated  the  fundamental  principle  of 
uniformitarianism,  that  the  explanation  of  the  past 
is  to  be  sought  in  the  study  of  the  present,  into 
the  position  of  an  axiom  ;  and  the  wild  specula- 
tions of  the  catastrophists,  to  which  we  all  listened 
with  respect  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  would 
hardly  find  a  single  patient  hearer  at  the  present 


232  THE  COMING   OF   AGE  OF  vil 

day.  No  physical  geologist  now  dreams  of  seeking, 
outside  the  range  of  known  natural  causes,  for  the 
explanation  of  anything  that  happened  millions  of 
years  ago,  any  more  than  he  would  be  guilty 
of  the  like  absurdity  in  regard  to  current  events. 

The  effect  of  this  change  of  opinion  upon  biolo- 
gical speculation  is  obvious.  For,  if  there  have 
been  no  periodical  general  physical  catastrophes, 
what  brought  about  the  assumed  general  ex- 
tinctions and  re-creations  of  life  which  are  the 
corresponding  biological  catastrophes  ?  And,  if  no 
such  interruptions  of  the  ordinary  course  of  nature 
have  taken  place  in  the  organic,  any  more  than  in 
the  inorganic,  world,  what  alternative  is  there  to 
the  admission  of  evolution  ? 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  in  biology  is  the 
necessary  result  of  the  logical  application  of  the 
principles  of  uniformitarianism  to  the  phenomena 
of  life.  Darwin  is  the  natural  successor  of  Hutton 
and  Lyell,  and  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  the  logical 
sequence  of  the  "  Principles  of  Geology." 

The  fundamental  doctrine  of  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  as  of  all  forms  of  the  theory  of  evolution 
applied  to  biology,  is  "  that  the  innumerable 
species,  genera,  and  families  of  organic  beings  with 
which  the  world  is  peopled  have  all  descended, 
each  within  its  own  class  or  group,  from  common 
parents,  and  have  all  been  modified  in  the  course  of 
descent." l 

1  Origin  of  Species,  ed.  1,  p.  457. 


VH  "THE  ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  "  233 

And,  in  view  of  the  facts  of  geology,  it  follows 
that  all  living  animals  and  plants  "  are  the  lineal 
descendants  of  those  which  lived  long  before  the 
Silurian  epoch."  l 

It  is  an  obvious  consequence  of  this  theory  of 
descent  with  modification,  as  it  is  sometimes  called, 
that  all  plants  and  animals,  however  different  they 
may  now  be,  must,  at  one  time  or  other,  have  been 
connected  by  direct  or  indirect  intermediate  grada- 
tions, and  that  the  appearance  of  isolation  presented 
by  various  groups  of  organic  beings  must  be  unreal. 

No  part  of  Mr.  Darwin's  work  ran  more  directly 
counter  to  the  prepossessions  of  naturalists  twenty 
years  ago  than  this.  And  such  prepossessions  were 
very  excusable,  for  there  was  undoubtedly  a  great 
deal  to  be  said,  at  that  time,  in  favour  of  the  fixity 
of  species  and  of  the  existence  of  great  breaks, 
which  there  was  no  obvious  or  probable  means  of 
filling  up,  between  various  groups  of  organic  beings. 

For  various  reasons,  scientific  and  unscientific, 
much  had  been  made  of  the  hiatus  between  man 
and  the  rest  of  the  higher  mammalia,  and  it  is  no 
wonder  that  issue  was  first  joined  on  this  part  of 
the  controversy.  I  have  no  wish  to  revive  past 
and  happily  forgotten  controversies ;  but  I  must 
state  the  simple  fact  that  the  distinctions  in  the 
cerebral  and  other  characters,  which  were  so  hotly 
affirmed  to  separate  man  from  all  other  animals  in 
1860,  have  all  been  demonstrated  to  be  non- 
1  Origin  of  Species,  p.  458. 


234  THE   COMING  OF  AGE   OF  vil 

existent,  and  that  the  contrary  doctrine  is  now 
universally  accepted  and  taught. 

But  there  were  other  cases  in  which  the  wide 
structural  gaps  asserted  to  exist  between  one  group 
of  animals  and  another  were  by  no  means  fictitious  ; 
and,  when  such  structural  breaks  were  real,  Mr. 
Darwin  could  account  for  them  only  by  supposing 
that  the  intermediate  forms  which  once  existed 
had  become  extinct.  In  a  remarkable  passage  he 
says — 

"  We  may  thus  account  even  for  the  distinctness 
of  whole  classes  from  each  other — for  instance,  of 
birds  from  all  other  vertebrate  animals — by  the 
belief  that  many  animal  forms  of  life  have  been 
utterly  lost,  through  which  the  early  progenitors 
of  birds  were  formerly  connected  with  the  early 
progenitors  of  the  other  vertebrate  classes."  1 

Adverse  criticism  made  merry  over  such  sugges- 
tions as  these.  Of  course  it  was  easy  to  get  out  of 
the  difficulty  by  supposing  extinction ;  but  where 
was  the  slightest  evidence  that  such  intermediate 
forms  between  birds  and  reptiles  as  the  hypothesis 
required  ever  existed  ?  And  then  probably  followed 
a  tirade  upon  this  terrible  forsaking  of  the  paths 
of  "  Baconian  induction." 

But  the  progress  of  knowledge  has  justified  Mr. 

Darwin  to   an  extent  which   could   hardly  have 

been    anticipated.      In   1862,  the    specimen    of 

Archceopteryx,  which,  until  the  last  two  or  three 

1  Origin  of  Species,  p.  431. 


VII  "THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  "  235 

years,  has  remained  unique,  was  discovered ;  and 
it  is  an  animal  which,  in  its  feathers  and  the 
greater  part  of  its  organisation,  is  a  veritable 
bird,  while,  in  other  parts,  it  is  as  distinctly 
reptilian. 

In  1868,  I  had  the  honour  of  bringing  under 
your  notice,  in  this  theatre,  the  results  of  investi- 
gations made,  up  to  that  time,  into  the  anatomical 
characters  of  certain  ancient  reptiles,  which 
showed  the  nature  of  the  modifications  in  virtue 
of  which  the  type  of  the  quadrupedal  reptile 
passed  into  that  of  a  bipedal  bird  ;  and  abundant 
confirmatory  evidence  of  the  justice  of  the  con- 
clusions which  I  then  laid  before  you  has  since 
come  to  light. 

In  1875,  the  discovery  of  the  toothed  birds  of 
the  cretaceous  formation  in  North  America  by 
Professor  Marsh  completed  the  series  of  transitional 
forms  between  birds  and  reptiles,  and  removed 
Mr.  Darwin's  proposition  that  "many  animal 
forms  of  life  have  been  utterly  lost,  through 
which  the  early  progenitors  of  birds  were 
formerly  connected  with  the  early  progenitors  of 
the  other  vertebrate  classes,"  from  the  region 
of  hypothesis  to  that  of  demonstrable  fact. 

In  1859,  there  appeared  to  be  a  very  sharp 
and  clear  hiatus  between  vertebrated  and  inverte- 
brated  animals,  not  only  in  their  structure,  but, 
what  was  more  important,  in  their  development. 
I  do  not  think  that  we  even  yet  know  the  precise 


236  THE   COMING   OF   AGE  OF  vii 

links  of.  connection  between  the  two ;  but  the 
investigations  of  Kowalewsky  and  others  upon 
the  development  of  Amphioxus  and  of  the  Tunicata, 
prove,  beyond  a  doubt,  that  the  differences  which 
were  supposed  to  constitute  a  barrier  between 
the  two  are  non-existent.  There  is  no  longer  any 
difficulty  in  understanding  how  the  vertebrate 
type  may  have  arisen  from  the  invertebrate, 
though  the  full  proof  of  the  manner  in  which 
the  transition  was  actually  effected  may  still  be 
lacking. 

Again,  in  1859,  there  appeared  to  be  a  no  less 
sharp  separation  between  the  two  great  groups  of 
flowering  and  flowerless  plants.  It  is  only  subse- 
quently that  the  series  of  remarkable  investiga- 
tions inaugurated  by  Hofmeister  has  brought  to 
light  the  extraordinary  and  altogether  unexpected 
modifications  of  the  reproductive  apparatus  in  the 
Lycopodiacece,  the  Rhizocarpcce,  and  the  Gymno- 
spermece,  by  which  the  ferns  and  the  mosses  are 
gradually  connected  with  the  Phanerogamic 
division  of  the  vegetable  world. 

So,  again,  it  is  only  since  1859  that  we  have 
acquired  that  wealth  of  knowledge  of  the  lowest 
forms  of  life  which  demonstrates  the  futility  of 
any  attempt  to  separate  the  lowest  plants  from 
the  lowest  animals,  and  shows  that  the  two  king- 
doms of  living  nature  have  a  common  borderland 
which  belongs  to  both,  or  to  neither. 

Thus  it  will  be  observed  that  the  whole  ten- 


VII  "THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES "  237 

dency  of  biological  investigation,  since  1859,  has 
been  in  the  direction  of  removing  the  difficulties 
which  the  apparent  breaks  in  the  series  created 
at  that  time;  and  the  recognition  of  gradation 
is  the  first  step  towards  the  acceptance  of  evolu- 
tion. 

As  another  great  factor  in  bringing  about  the 
change  of  opinion  which  has  taken  place  among 
naturalists,  I  count  the  astonishing  progress  which 
has  been  made  in  the  study  of  embryology. 
Twenty  years  ago,  not  only  were  we  devoid  of  any 
accurate  knowledge  of  the  mode  of  development 
of  many  groups  of  animals  and  plants,  but  the 
methods  of  investigation  were  rude  and  imperfect. 
At  the  present  time,  there  is  no  important  group 
of  organic  beings  the  development  of  which  has 
not  been  carefully  studied ;  and  the  modern 
methods  of  hardening  and  section-making  enable 
the  embryologist  to  determine  the  nature  of  the 
process,  in  each  case,  with  a  degree  of  minuteness 
and  accuracy  which  is  truly  astonishing  to  those 
whose  memories  carry  them  back  to  the 
beginnings  of  modern  histology.  And  the  results 
of  these  embryological  investigations  are  in  com- 
plete harmony  with  the  requirements  of  the 
doctrine  of  evolution.  The  first  beginnings  of  all 
the  higher  forms  of  animal  life  are  similar,  and 
however  diverse  their  adult  conditions,  they  start 
from  a  common  foundation.  Moreover,  the  pro- 
cess of  development  of  the  animal  or  the  plant 


238  THE  COMING  OF  AGE  OF  yil 

from  its  primary  egg,  or  germ,  is  a  true  process  of 
evolution — a  progress  from  almost  formless  to 
more  or  less  highly  organised  matter,  in  virtue  of 
the  properties  inherent  in  that  matter. 

To  those  who  are  familiar  with  the  process  of 
development,  all  a  priori  objections  to  the  doctrine 
of  biological  evolution  appear  childish.  Any  one 
who  has  watched  the  gradual  formation  of  a  com- 
plicated animal  from  the  protoplasmic  mass,  which 
constitutes  the  essential  element  of  a  frog's  or  a 
hen's  egg,  has  had  under  his  eyes  sufficient 
evidence  that  a  similar  evolution  of  the  whole 
animal  world  from  the  like  foundation  is,  at  any 
rate,  possible. 

Yet  another  product  of  investigation  has 
largely  contributed  to  the  removal  of  the  objec- 
tions to  the  doctrine  of  evolution  current  in  1859. 
It  is  the  proof  afforded  by  successive  discoveries 
that  Mr.  Darwin  did  not  over-estimate  the 
imperfection  of  the  geological  record.  No  more 
striking  illustration  of  this  is  needed  than  a  com- 
parison of  our  knowledge  of  the  mammalian  fauna 
of  the  Tertiary  epoch  in  1859  with  its  present 
condition.  M.  Gaudry's  researches  on  the  fossils 
of  Pikermi  were  published  in  1868,  those  of 
Messrs.  Leidy,  Marsh,  and  Cope,  on  the  fossils  of 
the  Western  Territories  of  America,  have  appeared 
almost  wholly  since  1870,  those  of  M.  Filhol  on 
the  phosphorites  of  Quercy  in  1878.  The  general 
effect  of  these  investigations  has  been  to  intro- 


Vil  "  THE  ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  "  239 

duce  to  us  a  multitude  of  extinct  animals,  the 
existence  of  which  was  previously  hardly  sus- 
pected ;  just  as  if  zoologists  were  to  become 
acquainted  with  a  country,  hitherto  unknown,  as 
rich  in  novel  forms  of  life  as  Brazil  or  South 
Africa  once  were  to  Europeans.  Indeed,  the  fossil 
fauna  of  the  Western  Territories  of  America  bid 
fair  to  exceed  in  interest  and  importance  all  other 
known  Tertiary  deposits  put  together ;  and  yet, 
with  the  exception  of  the  case  of  the  American 
tertiaries,  these  investigations  have  extended  over 
very  limited  areas  ;  and,  at  Pikermi,  were  con- 
fined to  an  extremely  small  space. 

Such  appear  to  me  to  be  the  chief  events  in  the 
history  of  the  progress  of  knowledge  during  the 
last  twenty  years,  which  account  for  the  changed 
feeling  with  which  the  doctrine  of  evolution  is  at 
present  regarded  by  those  who  have  followed  the 
advance  of  biological  science,  in  respect  of  those 
problems  which  bear  indirectly  upon  that  doc- 
trine. 

But  all  this  remains  mere  secondary  evidence. 
It  may  remove  dissent,  but  it  does  not  compel 
assent.     Primary  and  direct  evidence  in  favour  of  U 
evolution  can  be  furnished  only  by  palaeontology.    . 
The  geological  record,  so  soon  as  it  approaches 
completeness,   must,   when   properly    questioned, 
yield  either  an  affirmative  or  a  negative  answer : 
if  evolution  has  taken  place,  there  will  its  mark 


240  THE   COMING   OF  AGE   OF  vn 

be  left ;  if  it  has  not  taken  place,  there  will  lie 
its  refutation. 

What  was  the  state  of  matters  in  1859  ?  Let 
us  hear  Mr.  Darwin,  who  may  be  trusted  always 
to  state  the  case  against  himself  as  strongly  as 
possible. 

"  On  this  doctrine  of  the  extermination  of  an 
infinitude  of  connecting  links  between  the  living 
and  extinct  inhabitants  of  the  world,  and  at  each 
successive  period  between  the  extinct  and  still 
older  species,  why  is  not  every  geological  forma- 
tion charged  with  such  links  ?  Why  does  not 
every  collection  of  fossil  remains  afford  plain 
evidence  .of  the  gradation  and  mutation  of  the 
forms  of  life  ?  We  meet  with  no  such  evidence, 
and  this  is  the  most  obvious  and  plausible  of  the 
many  objections  which  may  be  urged  against  my 
theory."  1 

Nothing  could  have  been  more  useful  to  the 
opposition  than  this  characteristically  candid 
avowal,  twisted  as  it  immediately  was  into  an 
admission  that  the  writer's  views  were  contra- 
dicted by  the  facts  of  palaeontology.  But,  in  fact, 
Mr.  Darwin  made  no  such  admission.  What  he 
says  in  effect  is,  not  that  palaeontological  evidence 
is  against  him,  but  that  it  is  not  distinctly  in  his 
favour  ;  and,  without  attempting  to  attenuate  the 
fact,  he  accounts  for  it  by  the  scantiness  and  the 
imperfection  of  that  evidence. 

1  Origin  of  Species,  ed.  1,  p.  463. 


VII  "  THE   ORIGIN   OF   SPECIES  "  241 

What  is  the  state  of  the  case  now,  when,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  amount  of  our  knowledge  respect- 
ing the  mammalia  of  the  Tertiary  epoch  is 
increased  fifty-fold,  and  in  some  directions  even 
approaches  completeness  ? 

Simply  this,  that,  if  the  doctrine  of  evolution 
had  not  existed,  palaeontologists  must  have  in- 
vented it,  so  irresistibly  is  it  forced  upon  the 
mind  by  the  study  of  the  remains  of  the  Tertiary 
mammalia  which  have  been  brought  to  light  since 
1859. 

Among  the  fossils  of  Pikermi,  Gaudry  found 
the  successive  stages  by  which  the  ancient  civets 
passed  into  the  more  modern  hyaenas ;  through 
the  Tertiary  deposits  of  Western  America,  Marsh 
tracked  the  successive  forms  by  which  the  ancient 
stock  of  the  horse  has  passed  into  its  present 
form  ;  and  innumerable  less  complete  indications  of 
the  mode  of  evolution  of  other  groups  of  the 
higher  mammalia  have  been  obtained.  In  the 
remarkable  memoir  on  the  phosphorites  of 
Quercy,  to  which  I  have  referred,  M.  Filhol  de- 
scribes no  fewer  than  seventeen  varieties  of  the 
genus  Cynodictis,  which  fill  up  all  the  interval 
between  the  viverine  animals  and  the  bear-like 
dog  Amphicyon  ;  nor  do  I  know  any  solid  ground 
of  objection  to  the  supposition  that,  in  this 
Cynodictis-Amphicyon  group,  we  have  the  stock 
whence  all  the  Viveridse,  Felidae,  Hyaenidae, 
Canidae,  and  perhaps  the  Procyonidoe  and  Ursidae, 


242  THE  COMING  OF  AGE  OF  vn 

of  the  present  fauna  have  been  evolved.  On 
the  contrary,  there  is  a  great  deal  to  be  said  in 
favour. 

In  the  course  of  summing  up  his  results,  M. 
Filhol  observes : — 

"  During  the  epoch  of  the  phosphorites,  great 
changes  took  place  in  animal  forms,  and  almost 
the  same  types  as  those  which  now  exist  became 
defined  from  one  another. 

"  Under  the  influence  of  natural  conditions  of 
which  we  have  no  exact  knowledge,  though  traces 
of  them  are  discoverable,  species  have  been  modi- 
fied in  a  thousand  ways :  races  have  arisen  which, 
becoming  fixed,  have  thus  produced  a  corresponding 
number  of  secondary  species." 

In  1859,  language  of  which  this  is  an  uninten- 
tional paraphrase,  occurring  in  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  was  scouted  as  wild  speculation ;  at  pres- 
ent, it  is  a  sober  statement  of  the  conclusions  to 
which  an  acute  and  critically-minded  investigator 
is  led  by  large  and  patient  study  of  the  facts  of 
palaeontology.  I  venture  to  repeat  what  I  have 
said  before,  that  so  far  as  the  animal  world  is 
concerned,  evolution  is  no  longer  a  speculation,  but 
a  statement  of  historical  fact.  It  takes  its  place 
alongside  of  those  accepted  truths  which  must  be 
reckoned  with  by  philosophers  of  all  schools. 

Thus  when,  on  the  first  day  of  October  next, 
"  The  Origin  of  Species  "  comes  of  age,  the  pro- 
mise of  its  youth  will  be  amply  fulfilled  ;  and  we 


VII  "  THE   ORIGIN   OF  SPECIES  "  243 

shall  be  prepared  to  congratulate  the  venerated 
author  of  the  book,  not  only  that  the  greatness  of 
his  achievement  and  its  enduring  influence  upon 
the  progress  of  knowledge  have  won  him  a  place 
beside  our  Harvey ;  but,  still  more,  that,  like 
Harvey,  he  has  lived  long  enough  to  outlast 
detraction  and  opposition,  and  to  see  the  stone 
that  the  builders  rejected  become  the  head-stone 
of  the  corner. 


Till 
CHARLES  DARWIN 

[Nature,  April  27th,  1882] 

VERY  few,  even  among  those  who  have  taken  the 
keenest  interest  in  the  progress  of  the  revolution 
in  natural  knowledge  set  afoot  by  the  publication 
of  "  The  Origin  of  Species,"  and  who  have  watched, 
not  without  astonishment,  the  rapid  and  complete 
change  which  has  been  effected  both  inside  and 
outside  the  boundaries  of  the  scientific  world  in 
the  attitude  of  men's  minds  towards  the  doctrines 
which  are  expounded  in  that  great  work,  can  have 
been  prepared  for  the  extraordinary  manifestation 
of  affectionate  regard  for  the  man,  and  of  profound 
reverence  for  the  philosopher,  which  followed  the 
announcement,  on  Thursday  last,  of  the  death  of 
Mr.  Darwin. 

Not  only  in  these  islands,  where  so  many  have 
felt  the  fascination  of  personal   contact   with  an 


VIII 


CHARLES   DARWIN  245 


intellect  which  had  no  superior,  and  with  a  charac- 
ter which  was  even  nobler  than  the  intellect ;  but, 
in  all  parts  of  the  civilised  world,  it  would  seem 
that  those  whose  business  it  is  to  feel  the  pulse  of 
nations  and  to  know  what  interests  the  masses  of 
mankind,  were  well  aware  that  thousands  of  their 
readers  would  think  the  world  the  poorer  for 
Darwin's  death,  and  would  dwell  with  eager 
interest  upon  every  incident  of  his  history.  In 
France,  in  Germany,  in  Austro-Hungary,  in  Italy, 
in  the  United  States,  writers  of  all  shades  of 
opinion,  for  once  unanimous,  have  paid  a  willing 
tribute  to  the  worth  of  our  great  countryman, 
ignored  in  life  by  the  official  representatives  of  the 
kingdom,  but  laid  in  death  among  his  peers  in 
Westminster  Abbey  by  the  will  of  the  intelligence 
of  the  nation. 

It  is  not  for  us  to  allude  to  the  sacred  sorrows 
of  the  bereaved  home  at  Down  ;  but  it  is  no  secret 
that,  outside  that  domestic  group,  there  are  many 
to  whom  Mr.  Darwin's  death  is  a  wholly  irreparable 
loss.  And  this  not  merely  because  of  his  wonder- 
fully genial,  simple,  and  generous  nature;  his 
cheerful  and  animated  conversation,  and  the  in- 
finite variety  and  accuracy  of  his  information  ;  but 
because  the  more  one  knew  of  him,  the  more  he 
seemed  the  incorporated  ideal  of  a  man  of  science. 
Acute  as  were  his  reasoning  powers,  vast  as  was 
his  knowledge,  marvellous  as  was  his  tenacious 
industry,  under  physical  difficulties  which  would 


246  CHARLES   DARWIN  VIII 

have  converted  nine  men  out  of  ten  into  aimless 
invalids ;  it  was  not  these  qualities,  great  as  they 
were,  which  impressed  those  who  were  admitted 
to  his  intimacy  with  involuntary  veneration,  but  a 
certain  intense  and  almost  passionate  honesty  by 
which  all  his  thoughts  and  actions  were  irradiated, 
as  by  a  central  fire. 

It  was  this  rarest  and  greatest  of  endowments 
which  kept  his  vivid  imagination  and  great  specu- 
lative powers  within  due  bounds  ;  which  compelled 
him  to  undertake  the  prodigious  labours  of  original 
investigation  and  of  reading,  upon  which  his 
published  works  are  based ;  which  made  him 
accept  criticisms  and  suggestions  from  anybody 
and  everybody,  not  only  without  impatience,  but 
with  expressions  of  gratitude  sometimes  almost 
comically  in  excess  of  their  value ;  which  led  him 
to  allow  neither  himself  nor  others  to  be  deceived 
by  phrases,  and  to  spare  neither  time  nor  pains 
in  order  to  obtain  clear  and  distinct  ideas  upon 
every  topic  with  which  he  occupied  himself. 

One  could  not  converse  with  Darwin  without 
being  reminded  of  Socrates.  There  was  the  same 
desire  to  find  some  one  wiser  than  himself;  the 
same  belief  in  the  sovereignty  of  reason  ;  the  same 
ready  humour ;  the  same  sympathetic  interest  in 
all  the  ways  and  works  of  men.  But  instead  of 
turning  away  from  the  problems  of  Nature  as 
hopelessly  insoluble,  our  modern  philosopher 
devoted  his  whole  life  to  attacking  them  in  the 


VIII  CHARLES   DARWIN  247 

spirit  of  Heraclitus  and  of  Democritus,  with  results 
which  are  the  substance  of  which  their  specula- 
tions were  anticipatory  shadows. 

The  due  appreciation,  or  even  enumeration,  of 
these  results  is  neither  practicable  nor  desirable  at 
this  moment.  There  is  a  time  for  all  things — a 
time  for  glorying  in  our  ever-extending  conquests 
over  the  realm  of  Nature,  and  a  time  for  mourning 
over  the  heroes  who  have  led  us  to  victory. 

None  have  fought  better,  and  none  have  been 
more  fortunate,  than  Charles  Darwin.  He  found 
a  great  truth  trodden  underfoot,  reviled  by  bigots, 
and  ridiculed  by  all  the  world ;  he  lived  long 
enough  to  see  it,  chiefly  by  his  own  efforts, 
irrefragably  established  in  science,  inseparably 
incorporated  with  the  common  thoughts  of  men, 
and  only  hated  and  feared  by  those  who  would 
revile,  but  dare  not.  What  shall  a  man  desire 
more  than  this  ?  Once  more  the  image  of  Socrates 
rises  unbidden,  and  the  noble  peroration  of  the 
"  Apology  "  rings  in  our  ears  as  if  it  were  Charles 
Darwin's  farewell : — 

"  The  hour  of  departure  has  arrived,  and  we  go 
our  ways — I  to  die  and  you  to  live.  Which  is  the 
better,  God  only  knows." 


45 


IX 

THE  DARWIN  MEMORIAL 

[June  9th,  1885] 

Address  "by  the  President  of  the  Royal  Society,  in  the 
name  of  the  Memorial  Committee,  on  handing  over 
the  statue  of  Darwin  to  H.R.H.  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  as  representative  of  the  Trustees  of  the 
British  Museum. 

YOUR  ROYAL  HIGHNESS, — It  is  now  three  years 
since  the  announcement  of  the  death  of  our  famous 
countryman,  Charles  Darwin,  gave  rise  to  a 
manifestation  of  public  feeling,  not  only  in  these 
realms,  but  throughout  the  civilised  world,  which, 
if  I  mistake  not,  is  without  precedent  in  the 
modest  annals  of  scientific  biography. 

The  causes  of  this  deep  and  wide  outburst  of 
emotion  are  not  far  to  seek.  We  had  lost  one  of 
these  rare  ministers  and  interpreters  of  Nature 
whose  names  mark  epochs  in  the  advance  of 


IX  THE   DARWIN   MEMORIAL  249 

natural  knowledge.  For,  whatever  be  the  ultimate 
verdict  of  posterity  upon  this  or  that  opinion 
which  Mr.  Darwin  has  propounded ;  whatever 
adumbrations  or  anticipations  of  his  doctrines  may 
be  found  in  the  writings  of  his  predecessors ;  the 
broad  fact  remains  that,  since  the  publication  and 
by  reason  of  the  publication,  of  "  The  Origin  of 
Species "  the  fundamental  conceptions  and  the 
aims  of  the  students  of  living  Nature  have  been 
completely  changed.  From  that  work  has  sprung 
a  great  renewal,  a  true  "  instauratio  magna  "  of  the 
zoological  and  botanical  sciences. 

But  the  impulse  thus  given  to  scientific  thought 
rapidly  spread  beyond  the  ordinarily  recognised 
limits  of  biology.  Psychology,  Ethics,  Cosmology 
were  stirred  to  their  foundations,  and  the  "  Origin 
of  Species"  proved  itself  to  be  the  fixed  point 
which  the  general  doctrine  of  evolution  needed  in 
order  to  move  the  world.  "  Darwinism,"  in  one 
form  or  another,  sometimes  strangely  distorted 
and  mutilated,  became  an  everyday  topic  of  men's 
speech,  the  object  of  an  abundance  both  of 
vituperation  and  of  praise,  more  often  than  of 
serious  study. 

It  is  curious  now  to  remember  how  largely,  at 
first,  the  objectors  predominated  ;  but  considering 
the  usual  fate  of  new  views,  it  is  still  more 
curious  to  consider  for  how  short  a  time  the  phase 
of  vehement  opposition  lasted.  Before  twenty 
years  had  passed,  not  only  had  the  importance  of 


250  THE  DARWIN  MEMORIAL  is 

Mr.  Darwin's  work  been  fully  recognised,  but  the 
world  had  discerned  the  simple,  earnest,  generous 
character  of  the  man,  that  shone  through  every 
page  of  his  writings. 

I  imagine  that  reflections  such  as  these  swept 
through  the  minds  alike  of  loving  friends  and  of 
honourable  antagonists  when  Mr.  Darwin  died  ; 
and  that  they  were  at  one  in  the  desire  to  honour 
the  memory  of  the  man  who,  without  fear  and 
without  reproach,  had  successfully  fought  the 
hardest  intellectual  battle  of  these  days. 

It  was  in  satisfaction  of  these  just  and  generous 
impulses  that  our  great  naturalist's  remains  were 
deposited  in  Westminster  Abbey ;  and  that,  im- 
mediately-afterwards,  a  public  meeting,  presided 
over  by  my  lamented  predecessor, Mr.  Spottiswoode, 
was  held  in  the  rooms  of  the  Royal  Society, 
for  the  purpose  of  considering  what  further  step 
should  be  taken  towards  the  same  end. 

It  was  resolved  to  invite  subscriptions,  with  the 
view  of  erecting  a  statue  of  Mr.  Darwin  in  some 
suitable  locality  ;  and  to  devote  any  surplus  to  the 
advancement  of  the  biological  sciences. 

Contributions  at  once  flowed  in  from  Austria, 
Belgium,  Brazil,  Denmark,  France,  Germany, 
Holland,  Italy,  Norway,  Portugal,  Russia,  Spain, 
Sweden,  Switzerland,  the  United  States,  and  the 
British  Colonies,  no  less  than  from  all  parts  of  the 
three  kingdoms  ;  and  they  came  from  all  classes  of 
the  community.  To  mention  one  interesting  case, 


IX  THE   DARWIN   MEMORIAL  251 

Sweden  sent  in  2296  subscriptions  "from  all  sorts 
of  people,"  as  the  distinguished  man  of  science 
who  transmitted  them  wrote, "  from  the  bishop  to 
the  seamstress,  and  in  sums  from  five  pounds  to 
two  pence." 

The  Executive  Committee  has  thus  been  enabled 
to  carry  out  the  objects  proposed.  A  "  Darwin 
Fund "  has  been  created,  which  is  to  be  held  in 
trust  by  the  Royal  Society,  and  is  to  be  employed 
in  the  promotion  of  biological  research. 

The  execution  of  the  statue  was  entrusted  to 
Mr.  Boehm  ;  and  I  think  that  those  who  had  the 
good  fortune  to  know  Mr.  Darwin  personally  will 
admire  the  power  of  artistic  divination,  which  has 
enabled  the  sculptor  to  place  before  us  so  very 
characteristic  a  likeness  of  one  whom  he  had  not 
seen. 

It  appeared  to  the  Committee  that,  whether  they 
regarded  Mr.  Darwin's  career  or  the  requirements 
of  a  work  of  art,  no  site  could  be  so  appropriate  as 
this  great  hall,  and  they  applied  to  the  Trustees  of 
the  British  Museum  for  permission  to  erect  it  in 
its  present  position. 

That  permission  was  most  cordially  granted,  and 
I  am  desired  to  tender  the  best  thanks  of  the 
Committee  to  the  Trustees  for  their  willingness  to 
accede  to  our  wishes. 

I  also  beg  leave  to  offer  the  expression  of  our 
gratitude  to  your  Royal  Highness  for  kindly  con- 
senting to  represent  the  Trustees  to-day. 


252  THE   DARWIN  MEMORIAL  ix 

It  only  remains  for  me,  your  Royal  Highness, 
my  Lords  and  Gentlemen,  Trustees  of  the  British 
Museum,  in  the  name  of  the  Darwin  Memorial 
Committee,  to  request  you  to  accept  this  statue  of 
Charles  Darwin. 

We  do  not  make  this  request  for  the  mere  sake 
of  perpetuating  a  memory  ;  for  so  long  as  men 
occupy  themselves  with  the  pursuit  of  truth,  the 
name  of  Darwin  runs  no  more  risk  of  oblivion 
than  does  that  of  Copernicus,  or  that  of  Harvey. 

Nor,  most  assuredly,  do  we  ask  you  to  preserve 
the  statue  in  its  cynosural  position  in  this 
entrance-hall  of  our  National  Museum  of  Natural 
History  as  evidence  that  Mr.  Darwin's  views  have 
received  your  official  sanction  ;  for  science  does  not 
recognise  such  sanctions,  and  commits  suicide 
when  it  adopts  a  creed. 

No ;  we  beg  you  to  cherish  this  Memorial  as  a 
symbol  by  which,  as  generation  after  generation  of 
students  of  Nature  enter  yonder  door,  they  shall 
be  reminded  of  the  ideal  according  to  which  they 
must  shape  their  lives,  if  they  would  turn  to  the 
best  account  the  opportunities  offered  by  the 
great  institution  under  your  charge. 


OBITUARY  i 

[1888] 

CHARLES  ROBERT  DARWIN  was  the  fifth  child 
and  second  son  of  Robert  Waring  Darwin  and 
Susannah  Wedgwood,  and  was  born  on  the  12th 
February,  1809,  at  Shrewsbury,  where  his  father 
was  a  physician  in  large  practice. 

Mrs.  Robert  Darwin  died  when  her  son  Charles 
was  only  eight  years  old,  and  he  hardly  remem- 
bered her.  A  daughter  of  the  famous  Josiah 
Wedgwood,  who  created  a  new  branch  of  the 
potter's  art,  and  established  the  great  works  of 
Etruria,  could  hardly  fail  to  transmit  important 
mental  and  moral  qualities  to  her  children ;  and 
there  is  a  solitary  record  of  her  direct  influence 
in  the  story  told  by  a  schoolfellow,  who  remembers 
Charles  Darwin  "  bringing  a  flower  to  school,  and 

1  From  the  Obituary  Notices  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  Royal 
Society,  vol.  44. 


254  OBITUARY  X 

saying  that  his  mother  had  taught  him  how,  by 
looking  at  the  inside  of  the  blossom,  the  name  of 
the  plant  could  be  discovered."  (I.,  p.  28.1) 

The  theory  that  men  of  genius  derive  their 
qualities  from  their  mothers,  however,  can  hardly 
derive  support  from  Charles  Darwin's  case,  in  the 
face  of  the  patent  influence  of  his  paternal  fore- 
fathers. Dr.  Darwin,  i'ideed,  though  a  man  of 
marked  individuality  of  character,  a  quick  and 
acute  observer,  with  much  practical  sagacity,  is 
said  not  to  have  had  a  scientific  mind.  But  when 
his  son  adds  that  his  father  "  formed  a  theory  for 
almost  everything  that  occurred  "  (I.,  p.  20),  he 
indicates  a  highly  probable  source  for  that'  in- 
ability to  refrain  from  forming  an  hypothesis  on 
every  subject  which  he  confesses  to  be  one  of  the 
leading  characteristics  of  his  own  mind,  some 
pages  further  on  (I.,  p.  103).  Dr.  R.  W.  Darwin, 
again,  was  the  third  son  of  Erasmus  Darwin,  also 
a  physician  of  great  repute,  who  shared  the 
intimacy  of  Watt  and  Priestley,  and  was 
widely  known  as  the  author  of  "  Zoonomia,"  and 
other  voluminous  poetical  and  prose  works  which 
had  a  great  vogue  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  The  celebrity  which  they 
enjoyed  was  in  part  due  to  the  attractive  style  (at 
least  according  to  the  taste  of  that  day)  in  which 
the  author's  extensive,  though  not  very  profound, 

1  The  references  throughout  this  notice  are  to  the  Life  and 
Letters,  unless  the  contrary  is  expressly  stated. 


X  OBITUARY  255 

acquaintance  with  natural  phenomena  was  set 
forth ;  but  in  a  still  greater  degree,  probably,  to 
the  boldness  of  the  speculative  views,  always 
ingenious  and  sometimes  fantastic,  in  which  he 
indulged.  The  conception  of  evolution  set  afoot 
by  De  Maillet  and  others,  in  the  early  part  of  the 
century,  not  only  found  a  vigorous  champion  in 
Erasmus  Darwin,  but  he  propounded  an  hypo- 
thesis as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  species  of 
animals  and  plants  have  acquired  their  characters, 
which  is  identical  in  principle  with  that  subse- 
quently rendered  famous  by  Lamarck. 

That  Charles  Darwin's  chief  intellectual  in- 
heritance came  to  him  from  the  paternal  side, 
then,  is  hardly  doubtful.  But  there  is  nothing  to 
show  that  he  was,  to  any  sensible  extent,  directly 
influenced  by  his  grandfather's  biological  work. 
He  tells  us  that  a  perusal  of  the  "  Zoonomia  "  in 
early  life  produced  no  effect  upon  him,  although 
he  greatly  admired  it ;  and  that,  on  reading  it  again, 
ten  or  fifteen  years  afterwards,  he  was  much  disap- 
pointed, "the  proportion  of  speculation  being  so 
large  to  the  facts  given."  But  with  his  usual 
anxious  candour  he  adds, "  Nevertheless,  it  is  proba- 
ble that  the  hearing,  rather  early  in  life,  such  views 
maintained  and  praised,  may  have  favoured  my 
upholding  them,  in  a  different  form,  in  my  '  Origin 
of  Species.'  "  (I.,  p.  38.)  Erasmus  Darwin  was  in 
fact  an  anticipator  of  Lamarck,  and  not  of  Charles 
Darwin :  there  is  no  trace  in  his  works  of  the 


256  OBITUARY  X 

conceptions  by  the  addition  of  which  his  grandson 
metamorphosed  the  theory  of  evolution  as  applied 
to  living  things  and  gave  it  a  new  foundation. 

Charles  Darwin's  childhood  and  youth  afforded 
no  intimation  that  he  would  be,  or  do,  anything 
out  of  the  common  run.  In  fact,  the  prognosti- 
cations of  the  educational  authorities  into  whose 
hands  he  first  fell  were  most  distinctly  unfavour- 
able ;  and  they  counted  the  only  boy  of  original 
genius  who  is  known  to  have  come  under  their 
hands  as  no  better  than  a  dunce.  The  history  of 
the  educational  experiments  to  which  Darwin  was 
subjected  is  curious,  and  not  without  a  moral  for 
the  present  generation.  There  were  four  of  them, 
and  three  were  failures.  Yet  it  cannot  be  said 
that  the  materials  on  which  the  pedagogic  powers 
operated  were  other  than  good.  In  his  boyhood 
Darwin  was  strong,  well-grown,  and  active,  taking 
the  keen  delight  in  field  sports  and  in  every 
description  of  hard  physical  exercise  which  is 
natural  to  an  English  country-bred  lad ;  and,  in 
respect  of  things  of  the  mind,  he  was  neither 
apathetic,  nor  idle,  nor  one-sided.  The  "Auto- 
biography "  tells  us  that  he  "  had  much 
zeal  for  whatever  interested  "  him,  and  he  was 
interested  in  many  and  very  diverse  topics. 
He  could  work  hard,  and  liked  a  complex 
subject  better  than  an  easy  one.  The  "  clear 
geometrical  proofs "  of  Euclid  delighted  him. 
His  interest  in  practical  chemistry,  carried  out  in 


X  OBITUARY  257 

an  extemporised  laboratory,  in  which  he  was  per- 
mitted to  assist  by  his  elder  brother,  kept  him 
late  at  work,  and  earned  him  the  nickname  of 
"  gas  "  among  his  schoolfellows.  And  there  could 
have  been  no  insensibility  to  literature  in  one 
who,  as  a  boy,  could  sit  for  hours  reading  Shake- 
speare, Milton,  Scott,  and  Byron;  who  greatly 
admired  some  of  the  Odes  of  Horace ;  and  who, 
in  later  years,  on  board  the  "  Beagle,"  when  only 
one  book  could  be  carried  on  an  expedition, 
chose  a  volume  of  Milton  for  his  companion. 

Industry,  intellectual  interests,  the  capacity  for 
taking  pleasure  in  deductive  reasoning,  in  obser- 
vation, in  experiment,  no  less  than  in  the  highest 
works  of  imagination  :  where  these  qualities  are 
present  any  rational  system  of  education  should 
surely  be  able  to  make  something  of  them.  Un- 
fortunately for  Darwin,  the  Shrewsbury  Grammar 
School,  though  good  of  its  kind,  was  an  institution 
of  a  type  universally  prevalent  in  this  country  half 
a  century  ago,  and  by  no  means  extinct  at  the 
present  day.  The  education  given  was  "strictly 
classical,"  "especial  attention"  being  "paid  to 
verse-making,"  while  all  other  subjects,  except  a 
little  ancient  geography  and  history,  were  ignored. 
Whether,  as  in  some  famous  English  schools  at  that 
date  and  much  later,  elementary  arithmetic  was 
also  left  out  of  sight  does  not  appear ;  but  the 
instruction  in  Euclid  which  gave  Charles  Darwin 
so  much  satisfaction  was  certainly  supplied  by  a 


258  OBITUARY  X 

private  tutor.  That  a  boy,  even  in  his  leisure 
hours,  should  permit  himself  to  be  interested  in 
any  but  book-learning  seems  to  have  been  regarded 
as  little  better  than  an  outrage  by  the  head  master, 
who  thought  it  his  duty  to  administer  a  public 
rebuke  to  young  Darwin  for  wasting  his  time 
on  such  a  contemptible  subject  as  chemistry. 
English  composition  and  literature,  modern  lan- 
guages, modern  history,  modern  geography,  appear 
to  have  been  considered  to  be  as  despicable  as 
chemistry. 

For  seven  long  years  Darwin  got  through  his 
appointed  tasks ;  construed  without  cribs,  learned 
by  rote  whatever  was  demanded,  and  concocted 
his  verses  in  approved  schoolboy  fashion.  And 
the  result,  as  it  appeared  to  his  mature  judgment, 
was  simply  negative.  "  The  school  as  a  means  of 
education  to  me  was  simply  a  blank."  (I.  p.  32.) 
On  the  other  hand,  the  extraneous  chemical 
exercises,  which  the  head  master  treated  so 
contumelious] y,  are  gratefully  spoken  of  as  the 
"  best  part "  of  his  education  while  at  school. 
Such  is  the  judgment  of  the  scholar  on  the  school ; 
as  might  be  expected,  it  has  its  counterpart  in  the 
judgment  of  the  school  on  the  scholar.  The 
collective  intelligence  of  the  staff  of  Shrewsbury 
School  could  find  nothing  but  dull  mediocrity  in 
Charles  Darwin.  The  mind  that  found  satisfac- 
tion in  knowledge,  but  very  little  in  mere  learning ; 
that  could  appreciate  literature,  but  had  no  par- 


X  OBITUARY  259 

ticular  aptitude  for  grammatical  exercises ;  appeared 
to  the  "  strictly  classical"  pedagogue  to  be  no  mind 
at  all.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Darwin's  school 
education  left  him  ignorant  of  almost  all  the 
things  which  it  would  have  been  well  for  him  to 
know,  and  untrained  in  all  the  things  it  would 
have  been  useful  for  him  to  be  able  to  do,  in 
after  life.  Drawing,  practice  in  English  compo- 
sition, and  instruction  in  the  elements  of  the 
physical  sciences,  would  not  only  have  been  infi- 
nitely valuable  to  him  in  reference  to  his  future 
career,  but  would  have  furnished  the  discipline 
suited  to  his  faculties,  whatever  that  career  might 
be.  And  a  knowledge  of  French  and  German, 
especially  the  latter,  would  have  removed  from  his 
path  obstacles  which  he  never  fully  overcame. 

Thus,  starved  and  stunted  on  the  intellectual 
side,  it  is  not  surprising  that  Charles  Darwin's 
energies  were  directed  towards  athletic  amuse- 
ments and  sport,  to  such  an  extent,  that  even  his 
kind  and  sagacious  father  could  be  exasperated 
into  telling  him  that  "  he  cared  for  nothing  but 
shooting,  dogs,  and  rat-catching."  (I.  p.  32.)  It 
would  be  unfair  to  expect  even  the  wisest  of  fathers 
to  have  foreseen  that  the  shooting  and  the  rat- 
catching,  as  training  in  the  ways  of  quick  observa- 
tion and  in  physical  endurance,  would  prove  more 
valuable  than  the  construing  and  verse-making  to 
his  son,  whose  attempt,  at  a  later  period  of  his  life, 
to  persuade  himself  <;  that  shooting  was  almost  an 


260  OBITUARY  X 

intellectual  employment :  it  required  so  much  skill 
to  judge  where  to  find  most  game,  and  to  hunt  the 
dogs  well "  (I.  p.  43),  was  by  no  means  so  sophis- 
tical as  he  seems  to  have  been  ready  to  admit. 

In  1825,  Dr.  Darwin  came  to  the  very  just  con- 
clusion that  his  son  Charles  would  do  no  good  by 
remaining  at  Shrewsbury  School,  and  sent  him  to 
join  his  elder  brother  Erasmus,  who  was  studying 
medicine  at  Edinburgh,  with  the  intention  that 
the  younger  son  should  also  become  a  medical 
practitioner.  Both  sons,  however,  were  well  aware 
that  their  inheritance  would  relieve  them  from  the 
urgency  of  the  struggle  for  existence  which  most 
professional  men  have  to  face  ;  and  they  seemed  to 
have  allowed  their  tastes,  rather  than  the  medical 
curriculum,  to  have  guided  their  studies.  Erasmus 
Darwin  was  debarred  by  constant  ill-health  from 
seeking  the  public  distinction  which  his  high  in- 
telligence and  extensive  knowledge  would,  under 
ordinary  circumstances,  have  insured.  He  took 
no  great  interest  in  biological  subjects,  but  his 
companionship  must  have  had  its  influence  on 
his  brother.  Still  more  was  exerted  by  friends 
like  Coldstream  and  Grant,  «both  subsequently 
well-known  zoologists  (and  the  latter  an  enthu- 
siastic Lamarckian),  by  whom  Darwin  was  induced 
to  interest  himself  in  marine  zoology.  A  notice 
of  the  ciliated  germs  of  FLustra,  communicated  to 
the  Plinian  Society  in  1826,  was  the  first  fruits  of 
Darwin's  half  century  of  scientific  work.  Occa- 


X  OBITUARY  261 

sional  attendance  at  the  Wernerian  Society  brought 
him  into  relation  with  that  excellent  ornithologist 
the  elder  Macgillivray,  and  enabled  him  to  see  and 
hear  Audubon.  Moreover,  he  got  lessons  in  bird- 
stuffing  from  a  negro,  who  had  accompanied  the 
eccentric  traveller  Waterton  in  his  wanderings, 
before  settling  in  Edinburgh. 

No  doubt  Darwin  picked  up  a  great  deal  of 
valuable  knowledge  during  his  two  years'  residence 
in  Scotland ;  but  it  is  equally  clear  that  next  to 
none  of  it  came  through  the  regular  channels  of 
academic  education.  Indeed,  the  influence  of  the 
Edinburgh  professoriate  appears  to  have  been 
mainly  negative,  and  in  some  cases  deterrent ; 
creating  in  his  mind,  not  only  a  very  low  estimate 
of  the  value  of  lectures,  but  an  antipathy  to  the 
subjects  which  had  been  the  occasion  of  the 
boredom  inflicted  upon  him  by  their  instrument- 
ality. With  the  exception  of  Hope,  the  Professor 
of  Chemistry,  Darwin  found  them  all  "  intolerably 
dull."  Forty  years  afterwards  he  writes  of  the 
lectures  of  the  Professor  of  Materia  Medica  that 
they  were  "  fearful  to  remember."  The  Professor 
of  Anatomy  made  his  lectures  "  as  dull  as  he  was 
himself,"  and  he  must  have  been  very  dull  to  have 
wrung  from  his  victim  the  sharpest  personal  remark 
recorded  as  his.  But  the  climax  seems  to  have 
been  attained  by  the  Professor  of  Geology  and 
Zoology,  whose  preelections  were  so  "  incredibly 
dull "  that  they  produced  in  their  hearer  the  some- 


262  OBITUARY  2 

what  rash  determination  never  "  to  read  a  book  on 
geology  or  in  any  way  to  study  the  science "  so 
long  as  he  lived.  (I.  p.  41.) 

There  is  much  reason  to  believe  that  the 
lectures  in  question  were  eminently  qualified  to 
produce  the  impression  which  they  made ;  and 
there  can  be  little  doubt,  that  Darwin's  conclusion 
that  his  time  was  better  employed  in  reading 
than  in  listening  to  such  lectures  was  a  sound 
one.  But  it  was  particularly  unfortunate  that 
the  personal  and  professorial  dulness  of  the 
Professor  of  Anatomy,  combined  with  Darwin's 
sensitiveness  to  the  disagreeable  concomitants  of 
anatomical  work,  drove  him  away  from  the 
dissecting  room.  In  after  life,  he  justly  recognised 
that  this  was  an  "  irremediable  evil "  in  reference 
to  the  pursuits  he  eventually  adopted  ;  indeed,  it 
is  marvellous  that  he  succeeded  in  making  up  for 
his  lack  of  anatomical  discipline,  so  far  as  his 
work  on  the  Cirri pedes  shows  he  did.  And  the 
neglect  of  anatomy  had  the  further  unfortunate 
result  that  it  excluded  him  from  the  best 
opportunity  of  bringing  himself  into  direct  contact 
with  the  facts  of  nature  which  the  University  had 
to  offer.  In  those  days,  almost  the  only  practical 
scientific  work  accessible  to  students  was  anatomi- 
cal, and  the  only  laboratory  at  their  disposal  the 
dissecting  room. 

We  may  now  console  ourselves  with  the 
reflection  that  the  partial  evil  was  the  general 


X  OBITUARY  263 

good.  Darwin  had  already  shown  an  aptitude  for 
practical  medicine  (I.  p.  37)  ;  and  his  subsequent 
career  proved  that  he  had  the  making  of  an 
excellent  anatomist.  Thus,  though  his  horror  of 
operations  would  probably  have  shut  him  off  from 
surgery,  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  him  (any 
more  than  the  same  peculiarity  prevented  his 
father)  from  passing  successfully  through  the 
medical  curriculum  and  becoming,  like  his  father 
and  grandfather,  a  successful  physician,  in  which 
case  "  The  Origin  of  Species  "  would  not  have  been 
written.  Darwin  has  jestingly  alluded  to  the 
fact  that  the  shape  of  his  nose  (to  which  Captain 
Fitzroy  objected),  nearly  prevented  his  embarka- 
tion in  the  "  Beagle " ;  it  may  be  that  the 
sensitiveness  of  that  organ  secured  him  for 
science. 

At  the  end  of  two  years'  residence  in  Edin- 
burgh it  hardly  needed  Dr.  Darwin's  sagacity  to 
conclude  that  a  young  man,  who  found  nothing 
but  dulness  in  professorial  lucubrations,  could  not 
bring  himself  to  endure  a  dissecting  room,  fled 
from  operations,  and  did  not  need  a  profession  as 
a  means  of  livelihood,  was  hardly  likely  to 
distinguish  himself  as  a  student  of  medicine.  He 
therefore  made  a  new  suggestion,  proposing  that 
his  son  should  enter  an  English  University  and 
qualify  for  the  ministry  of  the  Church.  Charles 
Darwin  found  the  proposal  agreeable,  none  the 
less,  probably,  that  a  good  deal  of  natural  history 

46 


264  OBITUARY  X 

and  a  little  shooting  were  by  no  means  held, 
at  that  time,  to  be  incompatible  with  the 
conscientious  performance  of  the  duties  of  a 
country  clergyman.  But  it  is  characteristic  of  the 
man,  that  he  asked  time  for  consideration,  in 
order  that  he  might  satisfy  himself  that  he  could 
sign  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  with  a  clear  con- 
science. However,  the  study  of  "  Pearson  on  the 
Creeds  "  and  a  few  other  books  of  divinity  soon 
assured  him  that  his  religious  opinions  left 
nothing  to  be  desired  on  the  score  of  orthodoxy, 
and  he  acceded  to  his  father's  proposition. 

The  English  University  selected  was  Cambridge; 
but  an  unexpected  obstacle  arose  from  the  fact 
that,  within  the  two  years  which  had  elapsed, 
since  the  young  man  who  had  enjoyed  seven 
years  of  the  benefit  of  a  strictly  classical  education 
had  left  school,  he  had  forgotten  almost  every- 
thing he  had  learned  there,  "  even  to  some  few  of 
the  Greek  letters."  (I.  p.  46.)  Three  months 
with  a  tutor,  however,  brought  him  back  to  the 
point  of  translating  Homer  and  the  Greek  Testa- 
ment "  with  moderate  facility,"  and  Charles 
Darwin  commenced  the  third  educational  experi- 
ment of  which  he  was  the  subject,  and  was  en- 
tered on  the  books  of  Christ's  College  in  October 
1827.  So  far  as  the  direct  results  of  the  academic 
training  thus  received  are  concerned,  the  English 
University  was  not  more  successful  than  the 
Scottish.  "  During  the  three  years  which  I  spent 


X  OBITUARY  265 

at  Cambridge  my  time  was  wasted,  as  far  as  the 
academical  studies  were  concerned,  as  completely 
as  at  Edinburgh  and  as  at  school."  (I.  p.  46.) 
And  yet,  as  before,  there  is  ample  evidence  that 
this  negative  result  cannot  be  put  down  to  any 
native  defect  on  the  part  of  the  scholar.  Idle  and 
dull  young  men,  or  even  young  men  who  being 
neither  idle  nor  dull,  are  incapable  of  caring  for 
anything  but  some  hobby,  do  not  devote  them- 
selves to  the  thorough  study  of  Paley's  "  Moral 
Philosophy,"  and  "  Evidences  of  Christianity  "  ; 
nor  are  their  reminiscences  of  this  particular 
portion  of  their  studies  expressed  in  terms  such 
as  the  following  :  "  The  logic  of  this  book  [the 
'  Evidences ']  and,  as  I  may  add,  of  his  '  Natural 
Theology'  gave  me  as  much  delight  as  did 
Euclid."  (I.  p.  47.) 

The  collector's  instinct,  strong  in  Darwin  from 
his  childhood,  as  is  usually  the  case  in  great 
naturalists,  turned  itself  in  the  direction  of  Insects 
during  his  residence  at  Cambridge.  In  childhood 
it  had  been  damped  by  the  moral  scruples  of  a 
sister,  as  to  the  propriety  of  catching  and  killing 
insects  for  the  mere  sake  of  possessing  them,  but 
now  it  broke  out  afresh,  and  Darwin  became  an 
enthusiastic  beetle  collector.  Oddly  enough  he 
took  no  scientific  interest  in  beetles,  not  even 
troubling  himself  to  make  out  their  names  ;  his 
delight  lay  in  the  capture  of  a  species  which 
turned  out  to  be  rare  or  new,  and  still  more  in 


266  OBITUARY  X 

finding  his  name,  as  captor,  recorded  in  print. 
Evidently,  this  beetle-hunting  hobby  had  little  to 
do  with  science,  but  was  mainly  a  new  phase  of 
the  old  and  undiminished  love  of  sport.  In  the 
intervals  of  beetle- catching,  when  shooting  and 
hunting  were  not  to  be  had,  riding  across  country 
answered  the  purpose.  These  tastes  naturally 
threw  the  young  undergraduate  among  a  set  of 
men  who  preferred  hard  riding:  to  hard  reading, 
and  wasted  the  midnight  oil  upon  other  pursuits 
than  that  of  academic  distinction.  A  superficial 
observer  might  have  had  some  grounds  to  fear 
that  Dr.  Darwin's  wrathful  prognosis  might  yet  be 
verified.  But  if  the  eminently  social  tendencies 
of  a  vigorous  and  genial  nature  sought  an  outlet 
among  a  set  of  jovial  sporting  friends,  there  were 
other  and  no  less  strong  proclivities  which 
brought  him  into  relation  with  associates  of  a  very 
different  stamp. 

Though  almost  without  ear  and  with  a  very 
defective  memory  for  music,  Darwin  was  so 
strongly  and  pleasurably  affected  by  it  that  he 
became  a  member  of  a  musical  society;  and  an 
equal  lack  of  natural  capacity  for  drawing  did  not 
prevent  him  from  studying  good  works  of  art  with 
much  care. 

An  acquaintance  with  even  the  rudiments  of 
physical  science  was  no  part  of  the  requirements 
for  the  ordinary  Cambridge  degree.  But  there 
were  professors  both  of  Geology  and  of  Botany 


X  OBITUARY  267 

whose  lectures  were  accessible  to  those  who  chose 
to  attend  them.  The  occupants  of  these  chairs,  in 
Darwin's  time,  were  eminent  men  and  also  admir- 
able lecturers  in  their  widely  different  styles.  The 
horror  of  geological  lectures  which  Darwin  had 
acquired  at  Edinburgh,  unfortunately  prevented 
him  from  going  within  reach  of  the  fervid  elo- 
quence of  Sedgwick  ;  but  he  attended  the  botanical 
course,  and  though  he  paid  no  serious  attention  to 
the  subject,  he  took  great  delight  in  the  country 
excursions,  which  Henslow  so  well  knew  how  to 
make  both  pleasant  and  instructive.  The 
Botanical  Professor  was,  in  fact,  a  man  of  rare 
character  and  singularly  extensive  acquirements 
in  all  branches  of  natural  history.  It  was  his 
greatest  pleasure  to  place  his  stores  of  knowledge 
at  the  disposal  of  the  young  men  who  gathered 
about  him,  and  who  found  in  him,  not  merely  an 
encyclopedic  teacher  but  a  wise  counsellor,  and, 
in  case  of  worthiness,  a  warm  friend.  Darwin's 
acquaintance  with  him  soon  ripened  into  a  friend- 
ship which  was  terminated  only  by  Henslow's 
death  in  1861,  when  his  quondam  pupil  gave 
touching  expression  to  his  sense  of  what  he  owed 
to  one  whom  he  calls  (in  one  of  his  letters)  his 
"  dear  old  master  in  Natural  History."  (II.  p.  217.) 
It  was  by  Henslow's  advice  that  Darwin  was  led 
to  break  the  vow  he  had  registered  against  making 
an  acquaintance  with  geology  ;  and  it  was  through 
Henslow's  good  offices  with  Sedgwick  that  he 


268  OBITUARY  X 

obtained  the  opportunity  of  accompanying  the 
Geological  Professor  on  one  of  his  excursions  in 
Wales.  He  then  received  a  certain  amount  of 
practical  instruction  in  Geology,  the  value  of  which 
he  subsequently  warmly  acknowledged.  (I.  p. 
237.)  In  another  direction,  Henslow  did  him  an 
immense,  though  not  altogether  intentional 
service,  by  recommending  him  to  buy  and  study 
the  recently  published  first  volume  of  Lyell's 
"  Principles."  As  an  orthodox  geologist  of  the 
•then  dominant  catastrophic  school,  Henslow 
accompanied  his  recommendation  with  the 
admonition  on  no  account  to  adopt  Lyell's 
general  views.  But  the  warning  fell  on  deaf 
ears,  and  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
Darwin's  greatest  work  is  the  outcome  of  the 
unflinching  application  to  Biology  of  the  leading 
idea  and  the  method  applied  in  the  "Principles" 
to  geology.1  Finally,  it  was  through  Henslow, 
and  at  his  suggestion,  that  Darwin  was  offered  the 
appointment  to  the  "  Beagle  "  as  naturalist. 

During  the  latter  part  of  Darwin's  residence  at 
Cambridge  the  prospect  of  entering  the  Church, 
though  the  plan  was  never  formally  renounced, 

1  "After  my  return  to  England  it  appeared  to  me  that  by 
following  the  example  of  Lyell  in  Geology,  and  by  collecting  all 
facts  which  bore  in  anyway  on  the  variation  of  animals  and 
plants  under  domestication  and  nature,  some  light  might  per- 
haps be  thrown  on  the  whole  subject  [of  the  origin  of  species]." 
(I.  p.  83.)  See  also  the  dedication  of  the  second  edition  of  the 
Journal  of  a  Naturalist. 


X  OBITUARY  269 

seems  to  have  grown  very  shadowy.  Humboldt's 
"  Personal  Narrative,"  and  Herschel's  "  Introduc- 
tion to  the  Study  of  Natural  Philosophy,"  fell  in 
his  way  and  revealed  to  him  his  real  vocation. 
The  impression  made  by  the  former  work  was 
very  strong.  "  My  whole  course  of  life,"  says 
Darwin  in  sending  a  message  to  Humboldt,  "  is 
due  to  having  read  and  re-read,  as  a  youth,  his 
personal  narrative."  (I.  p.  336.)  The  description 
of  Teneriffe  inspired  Darwin  with  such  a  strong 
desire  to  visit  the  island,  that  he  took  some  steps , 
towards  going  there — inquiring  about  ships,  and 
so  on. 

But,  while  this  project  was  fermenting,  Henslow, 
who  had  been  asked  to  recommend  a  naturalist  for 
Captain  Fitzroy's  projected  expedition,  at  once 
thought  of  his  pupil.  In  his  letter  of  the  24th 
August,  1831,  he  says :  "  I  have  stated  that  I 
consider  you  to  be  the  best  qualified  person  I  know 
of  who  is  likely  to  undertake  such  a  situation.  I 
state  this — not  on  the  supposition  of  your  being  a 
finished  naturalist,  but  as  amply  qualified  for 
collecting,  observing,  and  noting  anything  worthy 
to  be  noted  in  Natural  History  ....  The  voyage 
is  to  last  two  years,  and  if  you  take  plenty  of 
books  with  you,  anything  you  please  may  be  done." 
(I.  p.  193.)  The  state  of  the  case  could  not  have 
been  better  put.  Assuredly  the  young  naturalist's 
theoretical  and  practical  scientific  training  had 
gone  no  further  than  might  suffice  for  the  outfit 


270  OBITUARY  x 

of  an  intelligent  collector  and  note-taker.  He  was 
fully  conscious  of  the  fact,  and  his  ambition  hardly 
rose  above  the  hope  that  he  should  bring  back 
materials  for  the  scientific  "  lions "  at  home  of 
sufficient  excellence  to  prevent  them  from  turning 
and  rending  him.  (I.  p.  248.) 

But  a  fourth  educational  experiment  was  to  be 
tried.  This  time  Nature  took  him  in  hand  herself 
and  showed  him  the  way  by  which,  to  borrow 
Henslow's  prophetic  phrase,  "  anything  he  pleased 
might  be  done." 

The  conditions  of  life  presented  by  a  ship-of-war 
of  only  242  tons  burthen,  would  not,  primd  facie, 
appear  to  be  so  favourable  to  intellectual  develop- 
ment as  those  offered  by  the  cloistered  retirement 
of  Christ's  College.  Darwin  had  not  even  a  cabin 
to  himself;  while,  in  addition  to  the  hindrances 
and  interruptions  incidental  to  sea-life,  which  can 
be  appreciated  only  by  those  who  have  had 
experience  of  them,  sea-sickness  came  on  whenever 
the  little  ship  was  "  lively  " ;  and,  considering  the 
circumstances  of  the  cruise,  that  must  have  been 
her  normal  state.  Nevertheless,  Darwin  found  on 
board  the  "  Beagle "  that  which  neither  the 
pedagogues  of  Shrewsbury,  nor  the  professoriate 
of  "Edinburgh,  nor  the  tutors  of  Cambridge  had 
managed  to  give  him.  "  I  have  always  felt  that  I 
owe  to  the  voyage  the  first  real  training  or 
education  of  my  mind  (I.  p.  61)  ;  "  and  in  a  letter 
Written  as  he  was  leaving  England,  he  calls  the 


X  OBITUARY  271 

voyage  on  which  he  was  starting,  with  just  insight, 
his  "  second  life."  (I.  p.  214.)  Happily  for  Darwin's 
education,  the  school  time  of  the  "  Beagle  "  lasted 
five  years  instead  of  two;  and  the  countries 
which  the  ship  visited  were  singularly  well  fitted 
to  provide  him  with  object-lessons,  on  the  nature 
of  things,  of  the  greatest  value. 

While  at  sea,  he  diligently  collected,  studied, 
and  made  copious  notes  upon  the  surface  Fauna. 
But  with  no  previous  training  in  dissection,  hardly 
any  power  of  drawing,  and  next  to  no  knowledge 
of  comparative  anatomy,  his  occupation  with  work 
of  this  kind — notwithstanding  all  his  zeal  and 
industry — resulted,  for  the  most  part,  in  a 
vast  accumulation  of  useless  manuscript.  Some 
acquaintance  with  the  marine  Crustacea,  observa- 
tions on  Planarice  and  on  the  ubiquitous  Sagitta, 
seem  to  have  been  the  chief  results  of  a  great 
amount  of  labour  in  this  direction. 

It  was  otherwise  with  the  terrestrial  phenomena 
which  came  under  the  voyager's  notice :  and 
Geology  very  soon  took  her  revenge  for  the  scorn 
which  the  much-bored  Edinburgh  student  had 
poured  upon  her.  Three  weeks  after  leaving 
England  the  ship  touched  land  for  the  first  time 
at  St.  Jago,  in  the  Cape  de  Verd  Islands,  and 
Darwin  found  his  attention  vividly  engaged  by  the 
volcanic  phenomena  and  the  signs  of  upheaval 
which  the  island  presented.  His  geological 
studies  had  already  indicated  the  direction  in: 


272  OBITUARY  X 

which  a  great  deal  might  be  done,  beyond  collect- 
ing ;  and  it  was  while  sitting  beneath  a  low  lava 
cliff  on  the  shore  of  this  island,  that  a  sense  of  his 
real  capability  first  dawned  upon  Darwin,  and 
prompted  the  ambition  to  write  a  book  on  the 
geology  of  the  various  countries  visited.  (I.  p.  66.) 
Even  at  this  early  date,  Darwin  must  have  thought 
much  on  geological  topics,  for  he  was  already 
convinced  of  the  superiority  of  Lyell's  views  to 
those  entertained  by  the  catastrophists l ;  and  his 
subsequent  study  of  the  tertiary  deposits  and  of  the 
terraced  gravel  beds  of  South  America  was 
eminently  fitted  to  strengthen  that  conviction. 
The  letters  from  South  America  contain  little 
reference  to  any  scientific  topic  except  geology ; 
and  even  the  theory  of  the  formation  of  coral 
reefs  was  prompted  by  the  evidence  of  extensive 
and  gradual  changes  of  level  afforded  by  the 
geology  of  South  America ;  "  No  other  work  of 
mine,"  he  says,  "  was  begun  in  so  deductive  a  spirit 
as  this  ;  for  the  whole  theory  was  thought  out  on 
the  West  Coast  of  South  America,  before  I  had 
seen  a  true  coral  reef.  I  had,  therefore,  only  to 
verify  and  extend  my  views  by  a  careful  exam- 

1  "I  had  brought  with  me  the  first  volume  of  Lyell's  Principles 
of  Geology,  which  I  studied  attentively  ;  and  the  book  was  of 
the  highest  service  to  me  in  many  ways.  The  very  first  place 
which  I  examined,  namely,  St.  Jago,  in  the  Cape  de  Verd 
Islands,  showed  me  clearly  the  wonderful  superiority  of  Lyell's 
manner  of  treating  Geology,  compared  with  that  of  any  other 
author  whose  works  I  had  with  me  or  ever  afterwards 
read"— (I.  p.  62.) 


X  OBITUARY  273 

ination  of  living  reefs/  (I.  p.  70.)  In  1835,  when 
starting  from  Lima  for  the  Galapagos,  he  recom- 
mends his  friend,  W.  D.  Fox,  to  take  up  geology : 
— "  There  is  so  much  larger  a  field  for  thought 
than  in  the  other  branches  of  Natural  History. 
I  am  become  a  zealous  disciple  of  Mr.  Ly  ell's  views, 
as  made  known  in  his  admirable  book.  Geologising 
in  South  America,  I  am  tempted  to  carry  parts  to 
a  greater  extent  even  than  he  does.  Geology  is  a 
capital  science  to  begin  with,  as  it  requires  nothing 
but  a  little  reading,  thinking,  and  hammering." 
(I.  p.  263.)  The  truth  of  the  last  statement,  when 
it  was  written,  is  a  curious  mark  of  the  subsequent 
progress  of  geology.  Even  so  late  as  1836,  Darwin 
speaks  of  being  "  much  more  inclined  for  geology 
than  the  other  branches  of  Natural  History." 
(I.  P.  275.) 

At  the  end  of  the  letter  to  Mr.  Fox,  however,  a 
little  doubt  is  expressed  whether  zoological  studies 
might  not,  after  all,  have  been  more  profitable  ; 
and  an  interesting  passage  in  the  "  Autobiography  " 
enables  us  to  understand  the  origin  of  this 
hesitation. 

"  During  the  voyage  of  the  *  Beagle '  I  had  been 
deeply  impressed  by  discovering  in  the  Pampean 
formation  great  fossil  animals  covered  with  armour 
like  that  on  the  existing  armadillos ;  secondly,  by 
the  manner  in  which  closely-allied  animals  replace 
one  another  in  proceeding  southwards  over  the 
continent ;  and,  thirdly,  by  the  South  American 


274  OBITUARY  X 

character  of  most  of  the  productions  of  the 
Galapagos  Archipelago,  and,  more  especially,  by 
the  manner  in  which  they  differ  slightly  on  each 
island  of  the  group  ;  some  of  the  islands  appearing 
to  be  very  ancient  in  a  geological  sense. 

"  It  was  evident  that  such  facts  as  these,  as  well 
as  many  others,  could  only  be  explained  on  the 
supposition  that  species  gradually  become  modi- 
fied ;  and  the  subject  haunted  me.  But  it  was 
equally  evident  that  neither  the  action  of  the 
surrounding  conditions,  nor  the  will  of  the  organ- 
isms (especially  in  the  case  of  plants)  could  account 
for  the  innumerable  cases  in  which  organisms  of 
every  kind  are  beautifully  adapted  to  their  habits 
of  life  ;  for  instance,  a  woodpecker  or  a  tree-frog  to 
climb  trees,  or  a  seed  for  dispersal  by  hooks  or 
plumes.  I  had  always  been  much  struck  by  such 
adaptations,  and  until  these  could  be  explained  it 
seemed  to  me  almost  useless  to  endeavour  to  prove 
by  indirect  evidence  that  species  have  been  modi- 
fied." (I.  p.  82.) 

The  facts  to  which  reference  is  here  made  were, 
without  doubt,  eminently  fitted  to  attract  the  at- 
tention of  a  philosophical  thinker ;  but,  until  the 
relations  of  the  existing  with  the  extinct  species  and 
of  the  species  of  the  different  geographical  areas 
with  one  another,  were  determined  with  some 
exactness,  they  afforded  but  an  unsafe  foundation 
for  speculation.  It  was  not  possible  that  this 
determination  should  have  been  effected  before 


X  OBITUARY  275 

the  return  of  the  "  Beagle  "  to  England  ;  and  thus 
the  date  which  Darwin  (writing  in  1837)  assigns  to 
the  dawn  of  the  new  light  which  was  rising  in  his 
mind  becomes  intelligible.1 

"  In  July  opened  first  note-book  on  Transmuta- 
tion of  Species.  Had  been  greatly  struck  from 
about  the  month  of  previous  March  on  character 
of  South  American  fossils  and  species  on  Gala- 
pagos Archipelago.  These  facts  (especially  latter) 
origin  of  all  my  views."  (I.  p.  276.) 

From  March,  1837,  then,  Darwin,  not  without 
many  misgivings  and  fluctuations  of  opinion, 
inclined  towards  transmutation  as  a  provisional 
hypothesis.  Three  months  afterwards  he  is  hard 
at  work  collecting  facta  for  the  purpose  of  test- 
ing the  hypothesis ;  and  an  almost  apologetic 
passage  in  a  letter  to  Lyell  shows  that,  already, 
the  attractions  of  biology  are  beginning  to  pre- 
dominate over  those  of  geology. 

"  I  have  lately  been  sadly  tempted  to  be  idle2; — 

1  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  F.  Darwin  for  the  knowledge  of  a 
letter  addressed  by  his  father  to  Dr.  Otto  Zacharias  in  1877 
which  contains  the  following  paragraph,  confirmatory  of  the 
view  expressed  above  :  "  When  I  was  on  board  the  Beagle,  I 
believed  in  the  permanence  of  species,  but,  as  far  as  I  can 
remember,  vague  doubts  occasionally  flitted  across  my  mind. 
On  my  return  home  in  the  autumn  of  1836,  I  immediately  began 
to  prepare  my  journal  for  publication,  and  then  saw  how  many 
facts  indicated  the  common  descent  of  species,  so  that  in  July, 
1837,  I  opened  a  note-book  to  record  any  facts  which  might  bear 
on  the  question.  But  I  did  not  become  convinced  that  species 
were  mutable  until.  I  think,  two  or  three  years  had  elapsed." 

•  Darwin  generally  uses  the  word  "idle"  in  a  peculiar  sense. 
He  means  by  it  working  hard  at  something  he  likes  when  he 


276  OBITUARY  X 

that  is,  as  far  as  pure  Geology  is  concerned — by 
the  delightful  number  of  new  views  which  have 
been  coming  in  thickly  and  steadily — on  the 
classification  and  affinities  and  instincts  of  animals 
— bearing  on  the  question  of  species.  Note-book 
after  note-book  has  been  filled  with  facts  which 
begin  to  group  themselves  clearly  under  sub-laws." 
(I.  p.  298.) 

The  problem  which  was  to  be  Darwin's  chief 
subject  of  occupation  for  the  rest  of  his  life  thus 
presented  itself,  at  first,  mainly  under  its  distribu- 
tional aspect.  Why  do  species  present  certain  re- 
lations in  space  and  in  time  ?  Why  are  the 
animals  and  plants  of  the  Galapagos  Archipelago 
so  like  those  of  South  America  and  yet  different 
from  them  ?  Why  are  those  of  the  several  islets 
more  or  less  different  from  one  another  ?  Why 
are  the  animals  of  the  latest  geological  epoch  in 
South  America  similar  in  fades  to  those  which 
exist  in  the  same  region  at  the  present  day,  and 
yet  specifically  or  generically  different  ? 

The  reply  to  these  questions,  which  was  almost 
universally  received  fifty  years  ago,  was  that  ani- 
mals and  plants  were  created  such  as  they  are  ; 
and  that  their  present  distribution,  at  any  rate  so 
far  as  terrestrial  organisms  are  concerned,  has  been 
effected  by  the  migration  of  their  ancestors  from 

ought  to  be  occupied  with  a  less  attractive  subject.  Though  it 
sounds  paradoxical,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  in  favour  of 
this  view  of  pleasant  work. 


3T  OBITUARY  277 

the  region  in  which  the  ark  stranded  after  the 
subsidence  of  the  deluge.  It  is  true  that  the 
geologists  had  drawn  attention  to  a  good  many 
tolerably  serious  difficulties  in  the  way  of  the 
diluvial  part  of  this  hypothesis,  no  less  than  to  the 
supposition  that  the  work  of  creation  had  occupied 
only  a  brief  space  of  time.  But  even  those,  such 
as  Lyell,  who  most  strenuously  argued  in  favour 
of  the  sufficiency  of  natural  causes  for  the  pro- 
duction of  the  phenomena  of  the  inorganic  world, 
held  stoutly  by  the  hypothesis  of  creation  in  the 
case  of  those  of  the  world  of  life. 

For  persons  who  were  unable  to  feel  satisfied 
with  the  fashionable  doctrine,  there  remained  only 
two  alternatives — the  hypothesis  of  spontaneous 
generation,  and  that  of  descent  with  modification. 
The  former  was  simply  the  creative  hypothesis 
with  the  creator  left  out ;  the  latter  had  already 
been  propounded  by  De  Maillet  and  Erasmus 
Darwin,  among  others  ;  and,  later,  systematically 
expounded  by  Lamarck.  But  in  the  eyes  of  the 
naturalist  of  the  "  Beagle  "  (and,  probably,  in  those 
of  most  sober  thinkers),  the  advocates  of  transmu- 
tation had  done,  the  doctrine  they  expounded  more 
harm  than  good. 

Darwin's  opinion  of  the  scientific  value  of  the 
"  Zoonomia  "  has  already  been  mentioned.  His 
verdict  on  Lamarck  is  given  in  the  following  pas- 
sage of  a  letter  to  Lyell  (March,  1863) : — 

"  Lastly,  you  refer  repeatedly  to  my  view  as  a 


278  OBITUARY  X 

modification  of  Lamarck's  doctrine  of  development 
and  progression.  If  this  is  your  deliberate  opinion 
there  is  nothing  to  be  said,  but  it  does  not  seem 
so  to  me.  Plato,  Buffon,  my  grandfather,  before 
Lamarck  and  others,  propounded  the  obvious  view 
that  if  species  were  not  created  separately  they 
must  have  descended  from  other  species,  and  I 
can  see  nothing  else  in  common  between  the 
"  Origin "  and  Lamarck.  I  believe  this  way  of 
putting  the  case  is  very  injurious  to  its  acceptance, 
as  it  implies  necessary  progression,  and  closely 
connects  Wallace's  and  my  views  with  what  I  con- 
sider, after  two  deliberate  readings,  as  a  wretched 
book,  and  one  from  which  (I  well  remember  to  my 
surprise)  I  gained  nothing." 

"  But,"  adds  Darwin  with  a  little  touch  of 
banter,  "  I  know  you  rank  it  higher,  which  is  curi- 
ous, as  it  did  not  in  the  least  shake  your  belief." 
(III.  p.  14 ;  see  also  p.  16,  "to  me  it  was  an  ab- 
solutely useless  book.") 

Unable  to  find  any  satisfactory  theory  of  the 
process  of  descent  with  modification  in  the  works 
of  his  predecessors,  Darwin  proceeded  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  his  own  views  independently ;  and 
he  naturally  turned,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  only 
certainly  known  examples  of  descent  with  modifi\ 
cation,  namely,  those  which  are  presented  by 
domestic  animals  and  cultivated  plants.  He 
devoted  himself  to  the  study  of  these  cases  with 
a  thoroughness  to  which  none  of  his  predecessors 


X  OBITUARY  279 

even  remotely  approximated ;  and  he  very  soon 
had  his  reward  in  the  discovery  "  that  selec- 
tion was  the  keystone  of  man's  success  in  mak- 
ing useful  races  of  animals  and  plants."  (I.  p. 
83.) 

This  was  the  first  step  in  Darwin's  progress, 
though  its  immediate  result  was  to  bring  him  face 
to  face  with  a  great  difficulty.  "  But  how  selection 
could  be  applied  to  organisms  living  in  a  state  of 
nature  remained  for  some  time  a  mvstery  to  me." 
(I.  p.  83.) 

The  key  to  this  mystery  was  furnished  by  the 
accidental  perusal  of  the  famous  essay  of  Malthus 
"On  Population"  in  the  autumn  of  1838.  The 
necessary  result  of  unrestricted  multiplication  is 
competition  for  the  means  of  existence.  The  suc- 
cess of  one  competitor  involves  the  failure  of  the 
rest,  that  is,  their  extinction  ;  and  this  "  selection  " 
is  dependent  on  the  better  adaptation  of  the  suc- 
cessful competitor  to  the  conditions  of  the  com- 
petition. Variation  occurs  under  natural,  no  less 
than  under  artificial,  conditions.  Unrestricted 
multiplication  implies  the  competition  of  varieties 
and  the  selection  of  those  which  are  relatively  best 
adapted  to  the  conditions. 

Neither  Erasmus  Darwin,  nor  Lamarck,  had  any 
inkling  of  the  possibility  of  this  process  of  "  natural 
selection  "  ;  and  though  it  had  been  foreshadowed 
by  Wells  in  1813,  and  more  fully  stated  by 
Matthew  in  1831,  the  speculations  of  the  latter 

47 


280  OBITUARY  X 

writer  remained  unknown  to  naturalists  until  after 
the  publication  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species." 

Darwin  found  in  the  doctrine  of  the  selection  of 
favourable  variations  by  natural  causes,  which  thus 
presented  itself  to  his  mind,  not  merely  a  probable 
theory  of  the  origin  of  the  diverse  species  of  living 
forms,  but  that  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of 
adaptation,  which  previous  speculations  had  utterly 
failed  to  give.  The  process  of  natural  selection  is, 
in  fact,  dependent  on  adaptation — it  is  all  one, 
whether  one  says  that  the  competitor  which  sur- 
vives is  the  "  fittest "  or  the  "  best  adapted."  And 
it  was  a  perfectly  fair  deduction  that  even  the 
most  complicated  adaptations  might  result  from 
the  summation  of  a  long  series  of  simple  favour- 
able variations. 

Darwin  notes  as  a  serious  defect  in  the  first 
sketch  of  his  theory  that  he  had  omitted  to  con- 
sider one  very  important  problem,  the  solution  of 
which  did  not  occur  to  him  till  some  time  after- 
wards. "  This  problem  is  the  tendency  in  organic 
beings  descended  from  the  same  stock  to  diverge 
in  character  as  they  become  modified.  .  .  .  The 
solution,  as  I  believe,  is  that  the  modified  offspring 
of  all  dominant  and  increasing  forms  tend  to 
become  adapted  to  many  and  highly  diversified 
places  in  the  economy  of  nature."  (1.  p.  84.) 

It  is  curious  that  so  much  importance  should  be 
attached  to  this  supplementary  idea.  It  seems 
obvious  that  the  theory  of  the  origin  of  species 


X  OBITUARY  281 

by  natural  selection  necessarily  involves  the  diverg- 
ence of  the  forms  selected.  An  individual  which 
varies,  ipso  facto  diverges  from  the  type  of  its 
species ;  and  its  progeny,  in  which  the  variation 
becomes  intensified  by  selection,  must  diverge  still 
more,  not  only  from  the  parent  stock,  but  from 
any  other  race  of  that  stock  starting  from,  a  varia- 
tion of  a  different  character.  The  selective  process 
could  not  take  place  unless  the  selected  variety 
was  either  better  adapted  to  the  conditions  than 
the  original  stock,  or  adapted  to  other  conditions 
than  the  original  stock.  In  the  first  case,  the 
original  stock  would  be  sooner  or  later  extirpated ; 
in  the  second,  the  type,  as  represented  by  the 
original  stock  and  the  variety,  would  occupy  more 
diversified  stations  than  it  did  before. 

The  theory,  essentially  such  as  it  was  published 
fourteen  years  later,  was  written  out  in  1844,  and 
Darwin  was  so  fully  convinced  of  the  importance 
of  his  work,  as  it  then  stood,  that  he  made  special 
arrangements  for  its  publication  in  case  of  his 
death.  But  it  is  a  singular  example  of  reticent 
fortitude,  that,  although  for  the  next  fourteen  years 
the  subject  never  left  his  mind,  and  during  the 
latter  half  of  that  period  he  was  constantly  en- 
gaged in  amassing  facts  bearing  upon  it  from  wide 
reading,  a  colossal  correspondence,  and  a  long  series 
of  experiments,  only  two  or  three  friends  were 
cognisant  of  his  views.  To  the  outside  world  he 
seemed  to  have  his  hands  quite  sufficiently  full  of 


282  OBITUARY  X 

other  matters.  In  1844,  he  published  his  observa- 
tions on  the  volcanic  islands  visited  during  the 
voyage  of  the  "  Beagle."  In  1845,  a  largely  re- 
modelled edition  of  his  "  Journal "  made  its  appear- 
ance, and  immediately  won,  as  it  has  ever  since 
held,  the  favour  of  both  the  scientific  and  the  un- 
scientific public.  In  1845,  the  "  Geological,  Ob- 
servations in  South  America  "  cams  out,  and  this 
book  was  no  sooner  finished  than  Darwin  set  to 
work  upon  the  Cirripedes.  He  was  led  to  under- 
take this  long  and  heavy  task,  partly  by  his  desire 
to  make  out  the  relations  of  a  very  anomalous 
form  which  he  had  discovered  on  the  coast  of 
Chili ;  and  partly  by  a  sense  of  "  presumption  in 
accumulating  facts  and  speculating  on  the  subject 
of  variation  without  having  worked  out  my  due 
share  of  species."  (II.  p.  31.)  The  eight  or  nine 
years  of  labour,  which  resulted  in  a  monograph  of 
first-rate  importance  in  systematic  zoology  (to  say 
nothing  of  such  novel  points  as  the  discovery  of 
complemental  males),  left  Darwin  no  room  to  re- 
proach himself  on  this  score,  and  few  will  share 
his  "  doubt  whether  the  work  was  worth  the  con- 
sumption of  so  much  time."  (I.  p.  82.) 

In  science  no  man  can  safely  speculate  about 
the  nature  and  relation  of  things  with  which  he  is 
unacquainted  at  first  hand,  and  the  acquirement 
of  an  intimate  and  practical  knowledge  of  the 
process  of  species-making  and  of  all  the  uncertain- 
ties which  underlie  the  boundaries  between  species 


x  OBITUARY  283 

and  varieties,  drawn  by  even  the  most  careful  and 
conscientious  systematists l  were  of  no  less  im- 
portance to  the  author  of  the  "  Origin  of  Species  " 
than  was  the  bearing  of  the  Cirripede  work  upon 
"  the  principles  of  a  natural  classification."  (I.  p. 
81.)  No  one,  as  Darwin  justly  observes,  has  a 
"  right  to  examine  the  question  of  species  who 
has  not  minutely  described  many."  (II.  p.  39.) 

In  September,  1854,  the  Cirripede  work  was 
finished,  "  ten  thousand  barnacles  "  had  been  sent 
"  out  of  the  house,  all  over  the  world,"  and  Darwin 
had  the  satisfaction  of  being  free  to  turn  again  to 
his  "  old  notes  on  species."  In  1855,  he  began  to 
breed  pigeons,  and  to  make  observations  on  the 
effects  of  use  and  disuse,  experiments  on  seeds, 
and  so  on,  while  resuming  his  industrious  collec- 
tion of  facts,  with  a  view  "  to  see  how  far  they 
favour  or  are  opposed  to  the  notion  that  wild  species 
are  mutable  or  immutable.  I  mean  with  my 
utmost  power  to  give  all  arguments  and  facts  on 
both  sides.  I  have  a  number  of  people  helping 
me  every  way,  and  giving  me  most  valuable 


1  "After  describing  a  set  of  forms  as  distinct  species,  tearing 
up  my  MS.,  and  making  them  one  species,  tearing  that  up  and 
making  them  separate,  and  then  making  them  one  again  (which 
has  happened  to  me),  I  have  gnashed  my  teeth,  cursed  species, 
and  asked  what  sin  I  had  committed  to  be  so  punished."  (II. 
p.  40. )  Is  there  any  naturalist  provided  with  a  logical  sense  and 
a  large  suite  of  specimens,  who  has  not  undergone  pangs  of  the 
sort  described  in  this  vigorous  paragraph,  which  might,  with 
advantage,  be  printed  on  the  title-page  of  every  systematic 
monograph  as  a  warning  to  the  uninitiated  ? 


284  OBITUARY  X 

assistance ;  but  I  often  doubt  whether  the  subject 
will  not  quite  overpower  me."     (II.  p.  49.) 

Early  in  1856,  on  Lyell's  advice,  Darwin  began 
to  write  out  his  views  on  the  origin  of  species  on  a 
scale  three  or  four  times  as  extensive  as  that  of  the 
work  published  in  1859.  In  July  of  the  same 
year  he  gave  a  brief  sketch  of  his  theory  in  a 
letter  to  Asa  Gray ;  and,  in  the  year  1857,  his 
letters  to  his  correspondents  show  him  to  be  busily 
engaged  on  what  he  calls  his  "big  book."  (II. 
pp.  85,  94.)  In  May,  1857,  Darwin  writes  to 
Wallace :  "  I  am  now  preparing  my  work  [on  the 
question  how  and  in  what  way  do  species  and 
varieties  differ  from  each  other]  for  publication, 
but  I  find  the  subject  so  very  large,  that,  though 
I  have  written  many  chapters,  I  do  not  suppose  I 
shall  go  to  press  for  two  years."  (II.  p.  95.)  In 
December,  1857,  he  writes,  in  the  course  of  a  long 
letter  to  the  same  correspondent,  "  I  am  extremely 
glad  to  hear  that  you  are  attending  to  distribution 
in  accordance  with  theoretical  ideas.  I  am  a  firm 
believer  that  without  speculation  there  is  no  good 
and  original  observation."  (II."  p.  108.)1  In 
June,  1858,  he  received  from  Mr.  Wallace,  then 
in  the  Malay  Archipelago,  an  "Essay  on  the 
tendency  of  varieties  to  depart  indefinitely  from 


1  The  last  remark  contains  a  pregnant  truth,  but  it  must  be 
confessed  it  hardly  squares  with  the  declaration  in  the  Auto- 
biography, (I.  p.  83),  that  he  worked  on  "true  Baconian, 
principles. " 


X  OBITUARY  285 

the  original  type,"  of  which  Darwin  says,  "  If 
Wallace  had  my  MS.  sketch  written  out  in  1842 
he  could  not  have  made  a  better  short  abstract ! 
Even  his  terms  stand  now  as  heads  of  my  chapters. 
Please  return  me  the  MS.,  which  he  does  not  say 
he  wishes  me  to  publish,  but  I  shall,  of  course,  at 
once  write  and  offer  to  send  it  to  any  journal. 
So  all  my  originality,  whatever  it  may  amount  to, 
will  be  smashed,  though  my  book,  if  ever  it  will 
have  any  value,  will  not  be  deteriorated  ;  as  all 
the  labour  consists  in  the  application  of  the 
theory."  (II.  p.  116.) 

Thus,  Darwin's  first  impulse  was  to  publish 
Wallace's  essay  without  note  or  comment  of  his 
own.  But,  on  consultation  with  Lyell  and  Hooker, 
the  latter  of  whom  had  read  the  sketch  of  1844, 
they  suggested,  as  an  undoubtedly  more  equitable 
course,  that  extracts  from  the  MS.  of  1844  and 
from  the  letter  to  Dr.  Asa  Gray  should  be  com- 
municated to  the  Linnean  Society  along  with 
Wallace's  essay.  The  joint  communication  was 
read  on  July  1,  1858,  and  published  under  the 
title  "On  the  Tendency  of  Species  to  form 
Varieties  ;  and  on  the  Perpetuation  of  Varieties 
and  Species  by  Natural  Means  of  Selection." 
This  was  followed,  on  Darwin's  part,  by  the  com- 
position of  a  summary  account  of  the  conclusions 
to  which  his  twenty  years'  work  on  the  species 
question  had  led  him.  It  occupied  him  for 
thirteen  months,  and  appeared  in  November, 


286  OBITUARY  X 

1859,  under  the  title  "  On  the  Origin  of  Species 
by  means  of  Natural  Selection  or  the  Preservation 
of  Favoured  Races  in  the  Struggle  of  Life." 

It  is  doubtful  if  any  single  book,  except  the 
"  Principia,"  ever  worked  so  great  and  so  rapid  a 
revolution  in  science,  or  made  so  deep  an 
impression  on  the  general  mind.  It  aroused  a 
tempest  of  opposition  and  met  with  equally 
vehement  support,  and  it  must  be  added  that 
no  book  has  been  more  widely  and  persistently 
misunderstood  by  both  friends  and  foes.  In  1861, 
Darwin  remarks  to  a  correspondent,  "  You  under- 
stand my  book  perfectly,  and  that  I  find  a  very 
rare  event  with  my  critics."  (I.  p.  313.)  The 
immense  popularity  which  the  "  Origin  "  at  once 
acquired  was  no  doubt  largely  due  to  its  many 
points  of  contact  with  philosophical  and  theo- 
logical questions  in  which  every  intelligent  man 
feels  a  profound  interest ;  but  a  good  deal  must 
be  assigned  to  a  somewhat  delusive  simplicity  of 
style,  which  tends  to  disguise  the  complexity  and 
difficulty  of  the  subject,  and  much  to  the  wealth 
of  information  on  all  sorts  of  curious  problems  of 
natural  history,  which  is  made  accessible  to  the 
most  unlearned  reader.  But  long  occupation  with 
the  work  has  led  the  present  writer  to  believe 
that  the  "  Origin  of  Species  "  is  one  of  the  hardest 
of  books  to  master;  1  and  he  is  justified  in  this 

1  He  is  comforted  to  find  that  probably  the  best  qualified 
judge  among  all  the  readers  of  the  Origin  in  1859  was  of  the 


X  OBITUARY  287 

conviction  by  observing  that  although  the 
"  Origin  "  has  been  close  on  thirty- years  before  the 
world,  the  strangest  misconceptions  of  the 
essential  nature  of  the  theory  therein  advocated 
are  still  put  forth  by  serious  writers. 

Although,  then,  the  present  occasion  is  not 
suitable  for  any  detailed  criticism  of  the  theory,  or 
of  the  objections  which  have  been  brought  against 
it,  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  endeavour  to 
separate  the  substance  of  the  theory  from  its 
accidents  ;  and  to  show  that  a  variety  not  only  of 
hostile  comments,  but  of  friendly  would-be  im- 
provements lose  their  raison  d'etre  to  the  careful 
student.  Observation  proves  the  existence  among 
all  living  beings  of  phenomena  of  three  kinds,  de- 
noted by  the  terms  heredity,  variation,  and  multi- 
plication. Progeny  tend  to  resemble  their  parents  ; 
nevertheless  all  their  organs  and  functions  are  sus- 
ceptible of  departing  more  or  less  from  the  average 
parental  character  ;  and  their  number  is  in  excess 
of  that  of  their  parents.  Severe  competition  for 
the  means  of  living,  or  the  struggle  for  existence, 
is  a  necessary  consequence  of  unlimited  multipli- 
cation ;  while  selection,  or  the  preservation  of 
favourable  variations  and  the  extinction  of  others, 
is  a  necessary  consequence  of  severe  competition. 
"  Favourable  variations "  are  those  which  are 
better  adapted  to  surrounding  conditions.  It 

same  opinion.  Sir  J.  Hooker  writes,  i*  It  is  the  very  hardest 
book  to  read,  to  full  profit,  that  I  ever  tried."  (II.  p.  242.) 


288  OBITUARY  X 

follows,  therefore,  that  every  variety  which  is 
selected  into  a  species  is  so  favoured  and  pre- 
served in  consequence  of  being,  in  some  one  or 
more  respects,  better  adapted  to  its  surroundings 
than  its  rivals.  In  other  words,  every  species 
which  exists,  exists  in  virtue  of  adaptation,  and 
whatever  accounts  for  that  adaptation  accounts  for 
the  existence  of  the  species. 

To  say  that  Darwin  has  put  forward  a  theory  of 
the  adaptation  of  species,  but  not  of  their  origin, 
is  therefore  to  misunderstand  the  first  principles 
of  the  theory.  For,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  it  is 
a  necessary  consequence  of  the  theory  of  selection 
that  every  species  must  have  some  one  or  more 
structural  or  functional  peculiarities,  in  virtue  of 
the  advantage  conferred  by  which,  it  has  fought 
through  the  crowd  of  its  competitors  and  achieved 
a  certain  duration.  In  this  sense,  it  is  true 
that  every  species  has  been  "  originated "  by 
selection. 

There  is  another  sense,  however,  in  which  it  is 
equally  true  that  selection  originates  nothing. 
"  Unless  profitable  variations  ....  occur  natural 
selection  can  do  nothing  "  ("  Origin,"  Ed.  I.  p.  82). 
"Nothing  can  be  effected  unless  favourable 
variations  occur"  (ibid.,  p.  108).  "  What  applies 
to  one  animal  will  apply  throughout  time  to  all 
animals — that  is,  if  they  vary — for  otherwise 
natural  selection  can  do  nothing.  So  it  will  be 
with  plants "  (ibid.,  p.  113).  Strictly  speaking, 


X  OBITUARY  289 

therefore,  the  origin  of  species  in  general  lies  in 
variation ;  while  the  origin  of  any  particular 
species  lies,  firstly,  in  the  occurrence,  and  secondly, 
in  the  selection  and  preservation  of  a  particular 
variation.  Clearness  on  this  head  will  relieve  one 
from  the  necessity  of  attending  to  the  fallacious 
assertion  that  natural  selection  is  a  deus  ex  machind, 
or  occult  agency. 

Those,  again,  who  confuse  the  operation  of  the 
natural  causes  which  bring  about  variation  and 
selection  with  what  they  are  pleased  to  call 
"  chance  "  can  hardly  have  read  the  opening 
paragraph  of  the  fifth  chapter  of  the  "  Origin  " 
(Ed.  I,  p.  131) :  "  I  have  sometimes  spoken  as  if 
the  variations  ....  had  been  due  to  chance. 
This  is  of  course  a  wholly  incorrect  expression, 
but  it  seems  to  acknowledge  plainly  our  igno- 
rance of  the  cause  of  each  particular  variation." 

Another  point  of  great  importance  to  the  right 
comprehension  of  the  theory,  is,  that  while  every 
species  must  needs  have  some  adaptive  advanta- 
geous characters  to  which  it  owes  its  preservation 
by  selection,  it  may  possess  any  number  of  others 
which  are  neither  advantageous  nor  disadvanta- 
geous, but  indifferent,  or  even  slightly  disadvan  - 
tageous.  (Ibid,,  p.  81.)  For  variations  take  place, 
not  merely  in  one  organ  or  function  at  a  time,  but 
in  many ;  and  thus  an  advantageous  variation, 
which  gives  rise  to  the  selection  of  a  new  race  or 
species,  may  be  accompanied  by  others  which  are 


290  OBITUARY  X 

indifferent,  but  which  are  just  as  strongly  heredi- 
tary as  the  advantageous  variations.  The  advan- 
tageous structure  is  but  one  product  of  a  modified 
general  constitution  which  may  manifest  itself  by 
several  other  products ;  and  the  selective  process 
carries  tne  general  constitution  along  with  the 
advantageous  special  peculiarity.  A  given  species 
of  plant  may  owe  its  existence  to  the  selective 
adaptation  of  its  flowers  to  insect  fertilisers ;  but  the 
character  of  its  leaves  may  be  the  result  of  varia- 
tions of  an  indifferent  character.  It  is  the  origin 
of  variations  of  this  kind  to  which  Darwin  refers  in 
his  frequent  reference  to  what  he  calls  "  laws  of 
correlation  of  growth  "  or  "  correlated  variation." 

These  considerations  lead  us  further  to  see  the 
inappropriateness  of  the  objections  raised  to 
Darwin's  theory  on  the  ground  that  natural 
selection  does  not  account  for  the  first  commence- 
ments of  useful  organs.  But  it  does  not  pretend 
to  do  so.  The  source  of  such  commencements  is 
necessarily  to  be  sought  in  different  variations, 
which  remain  unaffected  by  selection  until  they 
have  taken  such  a  form  as  to  become  utilisable  in 
the  struggle  for  existence. 

It  is  not  essential  to  Darwin's  theory  that 
anything  more  should  be  assumed  than  the  facts 
of  heredity,  variation,  and  unlimited  multiplication  ; 
and  the  validity  of  the  deductive  reasoning  as  to 
the  effect  of  the  last  (that  is,  of  the  struggle  for 
existence  which  it  involves)  upon  the  varieties 


X  OBITUARY  291 

resulting  from  the  operation  of  the  former.  Nor 
is  it  essential  that  one  should  take  up  any 
particular  position  in  regard  to  the  mode  of 
variation,  whether,  for  example,  it  takes  place  per 
saltum  or  gradually ;  whether  it  is  definite  in 
character  or  indefinite.  Still  less  are  those  who 
accept  the  theory  bound  to  any  particular  views  as 
to  the  causes  of  heredity  or  of  variation. 

That  Darwin  held  strong  opinions  on  some  or  all 
of  these  points  may  be  quite  true  ;  but,  so  far  as 
the  theory  is  concerned,  they  must  be  regarded  as 
obiter  dicta.  With  respect  to  the  causes  of  vari- 
ation, Darwin's  opinions  are,  from  first  to  last, 
put  forward  altogether  tentatively.  In  the  first 
edition  of  the  "  Origin,"  he  attributes  the  strongest 
influence  to  changes  in  the  conditions  of  life  of 
parental  organisms,  which  he  appears  to  think  act 
on  the  germ  through  the  intermediation  of  the 
sexual  organs.  He  points  out,  over  and  over  again, 
that  habit,  use,  disuse,  and  the  direct  influence  of 
conditions  have  some  effect,  but  he  does  not  think 
it  great,  and  he-  draws  attention  to  the  difficulty 
of  distinguishing  between  effects  of  these  agencies 
and  those  of  selection.  There  is,  however,  one 
class  of  variations  which  he  withdraws  from  the 
direct  influence  of  selection,  namely,  the  variations 
in  the  fertility  of  the  sexual  union  of  more  or  less 
closely  allied  forms.  He  regards  less  fertility,  or 
more  or  less  complete  sterility,  as  "incidental  to 
other  acquired  differences."  (Ibid.,  p.  245.) 


292  OBITUARY  X 

Considering  the  difficulties  which  surround  the 
question  of  the  causes  of  variation,  it  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at,  that  Darwin  should  have  inclined, 
sometimes,  rather  more  to  one  and,  sometimes, 
rather  more  to  another  of  the  possible  alternatives. 
There  is  little  difference  between  the  last  edition 
of  the  "  Origin  "  (1872)  and  the  first  on  this  head. 
In  1876,  however,  he  writes  to  Moritz  Wagner, 
"  In  my  opinion,  the  greatest  error  which  I  have 
committed  has  been  not  allowing  sufficient  weight 
to  the  direct  action  of  the  environments,  i.e.,  food, 
climate,  &c.,  independently  of  natural  selection. 
.  .  .  .  When  I  wrote  the  '  Origin,'  and  for  some 
years  afterwards,  I  could  find  little  good  evidence 
of  the  direct  action  of  the  environment ;  now  there 
is  a  large  body  of  evidence,  and  your  case  of  the 
Saturnia  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of  which 
I  have  heard."  (Ill,  p.  159.)  But  there  is  really 
nothing  to  prevent  the  most  tenacious  adherent  to 
the  theory  of  natural  selection  from  taking  any 
view  he  pleases  as  to  the  importance  of  the  direct 
influence  of  conditions  and  the  hereditary  trans- 
missibility  of  the  modifications  which  they  produce. 
In  fact,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  for  the  view 
that  the  so-called  direct  influence  of  conditions  is 
itself  a  case  of  selection.  Whether  the  hypothesis 
of  Pangenesis  be  accepted  or  rejected,  it  can  hardly 
be  doubted  that  the  struggle  for  existence  goes  on 
not  merely  between  distinct  organisms,  but  between 
the  physiological  units  of  which  each  organism  is 


X  OBITUARY  293 

composed,  and  that  changes  in  external  conditions 
favour  some  and  hinder  others. 

After  a  short  stay  in  Cambridge,  Darwin  resided 
in  London  for  the  first  five  years  which  followed 
his  return  to  England  ;  and  for  three  years,  he  held 
the  post  of  Secretary  to  the  Geological  Society, 
though  he  shared  to  the  full  his  friend  Ly ell's 
objection  to  entanglement  in  such  engagements. 
In  fact,  he  used  to  say  in  later  life,  more  than  half 
in  earnest,  that  he  gave  up  hoping  for  work  from 
men  who  accepted  official  duties  and,  especially, 
Government  appointments.  Happily  for  him,  he 
was  exempted  from  the  necessity  of  making  any 
sacrifice  of  this  kind,  but  an  even  heavier  burden 
was  laid  upon  him.  During  the  earlier  half  of  his 
voyage  Darwin  retained  the  vigorous  health  of  his 
boyhood,  and  indeed  proved  himself  to  be  excep- 
tionally capable  of  enduring  fatigue  and  privation. 
An  anomalous  but  severe  disorder,  which  laid  him 
up  for  several  weeks  at  Valparaiso  in  1834,  how- 
ever, seems  to  have  left  its  mark  on  his  constitution ; 
and,  in  the  later  years  of  his  London  life,  attacks 
of  illness,  usually  accompanied  by  severe  vomiting 
and  great  prostration  of  strength,  became  frequent. 
As  he  grew  older,  a  considerable  part  of  every  day, 
even  at  his  best  times,  was  spent  in  misery ;  while, 
not  unfrequently,  months  of  suffering  rendered  work 
of  any  kind  impossible.  Even  Darwin's  remarkable 
tenacity  of  purpose  and  methodical  utilisation  of 


294)  OBITUARY  X 

every  particle  of  available  energy  could  not  have 
enabled  him  to  achieve  a  fraction  of  the  vast 
amount  of  labour  he  got  through,  in  the  course  of 
the  following  forty  years,  had  not  the  wisest  and  the 
most  loving  care  unceasingly  surrounded  him  from 
the  time  of  his  marriage  in  1839.  As  early  as 
1842,  the  failure  of  health  was  so  marked 
that  removal  from  London  became  imperatively 
necessary ;  and  Darwin  purchased  a  house  and 
grounds  at  Down,  a  solitary  hamlet  in  Kent,  which 
was  his  home  for  th'e  rest  of  his  life.  Under  the 
strictly  regulated  conditions  of  a  valetudinarian 
existence,  the  intellectual  activity  of  the  invalid 
might  have  put  to  shame  most  healthy  men  ;  and, 
so  long  as  he  could  hold  his  head  up,  there  was  no 
limit  to  the  genial  kindness  of  thought  and  action 
for  all  about  him.  Those  friends  who  were 
privileged  to  share  the  intimate  life  of  the  house- 
hold at  Down  have  an  abiding  memory  of  the 
cheerful  restfulness  which  pervaded  and  character- 
ised it. 

After  mentioning  his  settlement  at  Down, 
Darwin  writes  in  his  Autobiography : — 

"  My  chief  enjoyment  and  sole  employment 
throughout  life  has  been  scientific  work  ;  and  the 
excitement  from  such  work  makes  me,  for  the  time, 
forget,  or  drives  quite  away,  my  daily  discomfort. 
I  have,  therefore,  nothing  to  record  during  the  rest 
of  my  life,  except  the  publication  of  my  several 
books."  (I,  p.  79.) 


X  OBITUARY  295 

Of  such  works  published  subsequently  to  1859, 
several  are  monographic  discussions  of  topics 
briefly  dealt  with  in  the  "  Origin,"  which,  it  must 
always  be  recollected,  was  considered  by  the 
author  to  be  merely  an  abstract  of  an  opus  ma/jus. 

The  earliest  of  the  books  which  may  be  placed 
in  this  category,  "  On  the  Various  Contrivances 
by  which  Orchids  are  Fertilised  by  Insects,"  was 
published  in  1862,  and  whether  we  regard  its 
theoretical  significance,  the  excellence  of  the  ob- 
servations and  the  ingenuity  of  the  reasonings 
which  it  records,  or  the  prodigious  mass  of  sub- 
sequent investigation  of  which  it  has  been  the 
parent,  it  has  no  superior  in  point  of  importance. 
The  conviction  that  no  theory  of  the  origin  of 
species  could  be  satisfactory  which  failed  to  offer 
an  explanation  of  the  way  in  which  mechanisms 
involving  adaptations  of  structure  and  function  to 
the  performance  of  certain  operations  are  brought 
about,  was,  from  the  first,  dominant  in  Darwin's 
mind.  As  has  been  seen,  he  rejected  Lamarck's 
views  because  of  their  obvious  incapacity  to  furnish 
such  an  explanation  in  the  case  of  the  great 
majority  of  animal  mechanisms,  and  in  that 
of  all  those  presented  by  the  vegetable  world. 

So  far  back  as  1793,  the  wonderful  work  of 
Sprengel  had  established,  beyond  any  reasonable 
doubt,  the  fact  that,  in  a  large  number  of  cases,  a 
flower  is  a  piece  of  mechanism  the  object  of  which 
is  to  convert  insect  visitors  into  agents  of  fertilisa- 
48 


296  OBITUARY  X 

tion.  Sprengel's  observations  had  been  most 
undeservedly  neglected  and  well-nigh  forgotten  ; 
but  Robert  Brown  having  directed  Darwin's 
attention  to  them  in  1841,  he  was  attracted 
towards  the  subject,  and  verified  many  of  Sprengel's 
statements.  (Ill,  p.  258.)  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  there  was  a  living  botanical  specialist, 
except  perhaps  Brown,  who  had  done  as  much. 
If,  however,  adaptations  of  this  kind  were  to  be 
explained  by  natural  selection,  it  was  necessary  to 
show  that  the  plants  which  were  provided  with 
mechanisms  for  ensuring  the  aid  of  insects  as 
fertilisers,  were  by  so  much  the  better  fitted 
to  compete  with  their  rivals.  This  Sprengel 
had  not  done.  Darwin  had  been  attending  to 
cross  fertilisation  in  plants  so  far  back  as  1839, 
from  having  arrived,  in  the  course  of  his  specu- 
lations on  the  origin  of  species,  at  the  convic- 
tion "  that  crossing  played  an  important  part 
in  keeping  specific  forms  constant"  (I,  p.  90). 
The  further  development  of  his  views  on  the 
importance  of  cross  fertilisation  appears  to  have 
taken  place  between  this  time  and  1857,  when  he 
published  his  first  papers  on  the  fertilisation  of 
flowers  in  the  "Gardener's  Chronicle."  If  the 
conclusion  at  which  he  ultimately  arrived,  that 
cross  fertilisation  is  favourable  to  the  fertility  of 
the  parent  and  to  the  vigour  of  the  offspring,  is 
correct,  then  it  follows  that  all  those  mechanisms 
which  hinder  self-fertilisation  and  favour  crossing 


X  OBITUARY  297 

must  be  advantageous  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence ;  and,  the  more  perfect  the  action  of  the 
mechanism,  the  greater  the  advantage.  Thus  the 
way  lay  open  for  the  operation  of  natural  selection 
in  gradually  perfecting  the  flower  as  a  fertilisation  - 
trap.  Analogous  reasoning  applies  to  the  fertil- 
ising insect.  The  better  its  structure  is  adapted 
to  that  of  the  trap,  the  more  will  it  be  able  to 
profit  by  the  bait,  whether  of  honey  or  of  pollen, 
to  the  exclusion  of  its  competitors.  Thus,  by  a 
sort  of  action  and  reaction,  a  two-fold  series  of 
adaptive  modifications  will  be  brought  about. 

In  1865,  the  important  bearing  of  this  subject 
on  his  theory  led  Darwin  to  commence  a  great 
series  of  laborious  and  difficult  experiments  on  the 
fertilisation  of  plants,  which  occupied  him  for 
eleven  years,  and  furnished  him  with  the  unex- 
pectedly strong  evidence  in  favour  of  the  influence 
of  crossing  which  he  published  in  1876,  under  the 
title  of"  The  Effects  of  Cross  and  Self  Fertilisation 
in  the  Vegetable  Kingdom."  Incidentally,  as  it 
were*  to  this  heavy  piece  of  work,  he  made  the 
remarkable  series  of  observations  on  the  different 
arrangements  by  which  crossing  is  favoured  and, 
in  many  cases,  necessitated,  which  appeared  in  the 
work  on  "The  Different  Forms  of  Flowers  in 
Plants  of  the  same  Species  "  in  1877. 

In  the  course  of  the  twenty  years  during  which 
Darwin  was  thus  occupied  in  opening  up  new 
regions  of  investigation  to  the  botanist  and 


298  OBITUARY  X 

showing  the  profound  physiological  significance  of 
the  apparently  meaningless  diversities  of  floral 
structure,  his  attention  was  keenly  alive  to  any 
other  interesting  phenomena  of  plant  life  which 
came  in  his  way.  In  his  correspondence,  he  not 
unfrequently  laughs  at  himself  for  his  ignorance 
of  systematic  botany ;  and  his  acquaintance  with 
vegetable  anatomy  and  physiology  was  of  the 
slenderest.  Nevertheless,  if  any  of  the  less 
common  features  of  plant  life  came  under  his 
notice,  that  imperious  necessity  of  seeking  for 
causes  which  nature  had  laid  upon  him,  impelled, 
and  indeed  compelled,  him  to  inquire  the  how 
and  the  why  of  the  fact,  and  its  bearing  on  his 
general  views.  And  as,  happily,  the  atavic  ten- 
dency to  frame  hypotheses  was  accompanied 
by  an  equally  strong  need  to  test  them  by  well- 
devised  experiments,  and  to  acquire  all  possible 
information  before  publishing  his  results,  the 
effect  was  that  he  touched  no  topic  without 
elucidating  it. 

Thus  the  investigation  of  the  operations  of 
insectivorous  plants,  embodied  in  the  work  on  that 
topic  published  in  1875,  was  started  fifteen  years 
before,  by  a  passing  observation  made  during  one 
of  Darwin's  rare  holidays. 

"  In  the  summer  of  1860,  I  was  idling  and 
resting  near  Hartfield,  where  two  species  of 
Drosera  abound ;  and  I  noticed  that  numerous 
insects  had  been  entrapped  by  the  leaves.  I 


X  OBITUARY  299 

carried  home  some  plants,  and  on  giving  them 
some  insects  saw  the  movements  of  the  tentacles, 
and  this  made  me  think  it  possible  that  the  insects 
were  caught  for  some  special  purpose.  Fortu- 
nately, a  crucial  test  occurred  to  me,  that  of  placing 
a  large  number  of  leaves  in  various  nitrogenous 
and  non-nitrogenous  fluids  of  equal  density ;  and 
as  soon  as  I  found  that  the  former  alone  excited 
energetic  movements,  it  was  obvious  that  here  was 
a  fine  new  field  for  investigation."  (I,  p.  95.) 

The  researches  thus  initiated  led  to  the  proof 
that  plants  are  capable  of  secreting  a  digestive 
fluid  like  that  of  animals,  and  of  profiting  by  the 
result  of  digestion  ;  whereby  the  peculiar  appara- 
tuses of  the  insectivorous  plants  were  brought 
within  the  scope  of  natural  selection.  Moreover, 
these  inquiries  widely  enlarged  our  knowledge  of 
the  manner  in  which  stimuli  are  transmitted  in 
plants,  and  opened  up  a  prospect  of  drawing  closer 
the  analogies  between  the  motor  processes  of  plants 
and  those  of  animals. 

So  with  respect  to  the  books  on  "Climbing 
Plants"  (1875),  and  on  the  "  Power  of  Movement 
in  Plants  "  (1880),  Darwin  says  ;— 

"  I  was  led  to  take  up  this  subject  by  reading  a 
short  paper  by  Asa  Gray,  published  in  1858.  He 
sent  me  some  seeds,  and  on  raising  some  plants  I 
was  so  much  fascinated  and  perplexed  by  the 
revolving  movements  of  the  tendrils  and  stems, 
which  movements  are  really  very  simple,  though 


300  OBITUARY  X 

appearing  at  first  sight  very  complex,  that  I  pro- 
cured various  other  kinds  of  climbing  plants 
and  studied  the  whole  subject.  .  .  .  Some  of  the 
adaptations  displayed  by  climbing  plants  are  as 
beautiful  as  those  of  orchids  for  ensuring  cross - 
fertilisation."  (I,  p.  93.) 

In  the  midst  of  all  this  amount  of  work, 
remarkable  alike  for  its  variety  and  its  importance, 
among  plants,  the  animal  kingdom  was  by  no 
means  neglected.  A  large  moiety  of  "The 
Variation  of  Animals  and  Plants  under  Domesti- 
cation" (1868),  which  contains  the  pieces  justijica- 
tives  of  the  first  chapter  of  the  "  Origin,"  is  devoted 
to  domestic  animals,  and  the  hypothesis  of 
"  pangenesis  "  propounded  in  the  second  volume 
applies  to  the  whole  living  world.  In  the  "  Ori- 
gin" Darwin  throws  out  some  suggestions  as  to 
the  causes  of  variation,  but  he  takes  heredity,  as  it 
is  manifested  by  individual  organisms,  for  granted, 
as  an  ultimate  fact ;  pangenesis  is  an  attempt  to 
account  for  the  phenomena  of  heredity  in  the 
organism,  on  the  assumption  that  the  physiological 
units  of  which  the  organism  is  composed  give  off 
gemmules,  which,  in  virtue  of  heredity,  tend  to 
reproduce  the  unit  from  which  they  are  derived. 

That  Darwin  had  the  application  of  his  theory 
to  the  origin  of  the  human  species  clearly  in  his 
mind  in  1859,  is  obvious  from  a  passage  in  the 
first  edition  of  "  The  Origin  of  Species."  (Ed.  I, 
p.  488.)  "  In  the  distant  future  I  see  open  fields 


X  OBITUARY  301 

for  far  more  important  researches.  Psychology 
will  be  based  on  a  new  foundation,  that  of  the 
necessary  acquirement  of  each  mental  power  and 
capacity  by  gradation.  Light  will  be  thrown  on 
the  origin  of  man  and  his  history."  It  is  one  of 
the  curiosities  of  scientific  literature,  that,  in  the 
face  of  this  plain  declaration,  its  author  should  have 
been  charged  with  concealing  his  opinions  on  the 
subject  of  the  origin  of  man.  But  he  reserved  the 
full  statement  of  his  views  until  1871,  when  the 
"  Descent  of  Man  "  was  published.  The  "  Expres- 
sion of  the  Emotions  "  (originally  intended  to  form 
only  a  chapter  in  the  "  Descent  of  Man  ")  grew  into 
a  separate  volume,  which  appeared  in  1872. 
Although  always  taking  a  keen  interest  in  geology, 
Darwin  naturally  found  no  time  disposable  for 
geological  work,  even  had  his  health  permitted  it, 
after  he  became  seriously  engaged  with  the  great 
problem  of  species.  But  the  last  of  his  labours  is, 
in  some  sense,  a  return  to  his  earliest,  inasmuch  as 
it  is  an  expansion  of  a  short  paper  read  before  the 
Geological  Society  more  than  forty  years  before, 
and,  as  he  says,  "  revived  old  geological  thoughts  " 
(I,  p.  98).  In  fact,  "  The  Formation  of  Vegetable 
Mould  through  the  Action  of  Worms,"  affords  as 
striking  an  example  of  the  great  results  produced 
by  the  long-continued  operation  of  small  causes  as 
even  the  author  of  the  "  Principles  of  Geology  " 
could  have  desired. 

In  the  early  months  of  1882  Darwin's  health 


302  OBITUARY  X 

underwent  a  change  for  the  worse  ;  attacks  of 
giddiness  and  fainting  supervened,  and  on  the  19th 
of  April  he  died.  On  the  24th,  his  remains  were 
interred  in  Westminster  Abbey,  in  accordance  with 
the  general  feeling  that  such  a  man  as  he  should 
not  go  to  the  grave  without  some  public  recogni- 
tion of  the  greatness  of  his  work. 

Mr.  Darwin  became  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society  in  1839  ;  one  of  the  Royal  Medals  was 
awarded  to  him  in  1853,  and  he  received  the 
Copley  Medal  in  1864.  The  "  Life  and  Letters," 
edited  with  admirable  skill  and  judgment  by  Mr. 
Francis  Darwin,  gives  a  full  and  singularly  vivid 
presentment  of  his  father's  personal  character,  of 
his  mode  of  work,  and  of  the  events  of  his  life.  In 
the  present  brief  obituary  notice,  the  writer  has 
attempted  nothing  more  than  to  select  and  put 
together  those  facts  which  enable  us  to  trace  the 
intellectual  evolution  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
many  great  men  of  science  whose  names  adorn  the 
long  roll  of  the  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society. 


XI 


ON  OUR  KNOWLEDGE  OP  THE  CAUSES 
OF  THE  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC 
NATURE 

[Six  Lectures  to  Working  Men.— 1863.] 
I. 

THE  PRESENT  CONDITION  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE. 

WHEN  it  was  my  duty  to  consider  what  subject  I 
would  select  for  the  six  lectures  which  I  shall  now 
have  the  pleasure  of  delivering  to  you,  it  occurred 
to  me  that  I  could  not  do  better  than  endeavour 
to  put  before  you  in  a  true  light,  or  in  what  I 
might  perhaps  with  more  modesty  call,  that  which 
I  conceive  myself  to  be  the  true  light,  the  position 
of  a  book  which  has  been  more  praised  and  more 
abused,  perhaps,  than  any  book  which  has  appeared 
for  some  years ; — I  mean  Mr.  Darwin's  work  on  the 
"  Origin  of  Species."  That  work,  I  doubt  not, 
many  of  you  have  read  ;  for  I  know  the  inquiring 
spirit  which  is  rife  among  you.  At  any  rate,  all 
of  you  will  have  heard  of  it, — some  by  one  kind  of 
report  and  some  by  another  kind  of  report ;  the 


304  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

attention  of  all  and  the  curiosity  of  all  have  been 
probably  more  or  less  excited  on  the  subject  of 
that  work.  All  I  can  do,  and  all  I  shall  attempt 
to  do,  is  to  put  before  you  that  kind  of  judgment 
which  has  been  formed  by  a  man,  who,  of  course, 
is  liable  to  judge  erroneously  ;  but,  at  any  rate,  of 
one  whose  business  and  profession  it  is  to  form 
judgments  upon  questions  of  this  nature. 

And  here,  as  it  will  always  happen  when  dealing 
with  an  extensive  subject,  the  greater  part  of  my 
course — if,  indeed,  so  small  a  number  of  lectures 
can  be  properly  called  a  course — must  be  devoted 
to  preliminary  matters,  or  rather  to  a  statement  of 
those  facts  and  of  those  principles  which  the  work 
itself  dwells  upon,  and  brings  more  or  less  directly 
before  us.  I  have  no  right  to  suppose  that  all  or 
any  of  you  are  naturalists  ;  and,  even  if  you  were, 
the  misconceptions  and  misunderstandings  prev- 
alent even  among  naturalists,  on  these  matters, 
would  make  it  desirable  that  I  should  take  the 
course  I  now  propose  to  take, — that  I  should 
start  from  the  beginning, — that  I  should  endeavour 
to  point  out  what  is  the  existing  state  of  the 
organic  world — that  I  should  point  out  its  past 
condition, — that  I  should  state  what  is  the  precise 
nature  of  the  undertaking  which  Mr.  Darwin  has 
taken  in  hand  ;  that  I  should  endeavour  to  show 
you  what  are  the  only  methods  by  which  that 
undertaking  can  be  brought  to  an  issue,  and  to 
point  out  to  you  how  far  the  author  of  the  work 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC   NATURE          305 

in  question  has  satisfied  those  conditions,  how  far 
he  has  not  satisfied  them,  how  far  they  are  satis- 
fiable  by  man,  and  how  far  they  are  not  satisfiable 
by  man. 

To-night,  in  taking  up  the  first  part  of  the 
question,  I  shall  endeavour  to  put  before  you  a 
sort  of  broad  notion  of  our  knowledge  of  the  con- 
dition of  the  living  world.  There  are  many  ways 
of  doing  this.  I  might  deal  with  it  pictorially  and 
graphically.  Following  the  example  of  Humboldt 
in  his  "  Aspects  of  Nature,"  I  might  endeavour  to 
point  out  the  infinite  variety  of  organic  life  in 
every  mode  of  its  existence,  with  reference  to  the 
variations  of  climate  and  the  like  ;  and  such  an 
attempt  would  be  fraught  with  interest  to  us  all ; 
but  considering  the  subject  before  us,  such  a  course 
would  not  be  that  best  calculated  to  assist  us.  In 
an  argument  of  this  kind  we  must  go  further  and 
dig  deeper  into  the  matter  ;  we  must  endeavour  to 
look  into  the  foundations  of  living  Nature,  if  I 
may  so  say,  and  discover  the  principles  involved  in 
some  of  her  most  secret  operations.  I  propose, 
therefore,  in  the  first  place,  to  take  some  ordinary 
animal  with  which  you  are  all  familiar,  and,  by 
easily  comprehensible  and  obvious  examples  drawn 
from  it,  to  show  what  are  the  kind  of  problems 
which  living  beings  in  general  lay  before  us;  and 
I  shall  then  show  you  that  the  same  problems  are 
laid  open  to  us  by  all  kinds  of  living  beings. 
But  hrst,  let  me  say  in  what  sense  I  have  used  the 


306  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

words  "  organic  nature."  In  speaking  of  the 
causes  which  lead  to  oar  present  knowledge  of 
organic  nature,  I  have  used  it  almost  as  an 
equivalent  of  the  word  "  living,"  and  for  this 
reason, — that  in  almost  all  living  beings  you  can 
distinguish  several  distinct  portions  set  apart  to 
do  particular  things  and  work  in  a  particular  way. 
These  are  termed  "  organs,"  and  the  whole 
together  is  called  "organic."  And  as  it  is 
universally  characteristic  of  them,  the  term 
"  organic "  has  been  very  conveniently  employed 
to  denote  the  whole  of  living  nature, — the  whole 
of  the  plant  world,  and  the  whole  of  the  animal 
world. 

Few  animals  can  be  more  familiar  to  you  than 
that  whose  skeleton  is  shown  on  our  diagram. 
You  need  not  bother  yourselves  with  this  "  Equus 
caballus  "  written  under  it ;  that  is  only  the  Latin 
name  of  it,  and  does  not  make  it  any  better.  It 
simply  means  the  common  horse.  Suppose  we 
wish  to  understand  all  about  the  horse.  Our 
first  object  must  be  to  study  the  structure  of  the 
animal.  The  whole  of  his  body  is  inclosed  within 
a  hide,  a  skin  covered  with  hair  ;  and  if  that  hide 
or  skin  be  taken  off,  we  find  a  great  mass  of  flesh, 
or  what  is  technically  called  muscle,  being  the 
substance  which  by  its  power  of  contraction  enables 
the  animal  to  move.  These  muscles  move  the  hard 
parts  one  upon  the  other,  and  so  give  that  strength 
and  power  of  motion  which  renders  the  horse  so 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE     307 

useful  to  us  in  the  performance  of  those  services 
in  which  we  employ  him. 

And  then,  on  separating  and  removing  the  whole 
of  this  skin  and  flesh,  you  have  a  great  series 
of  bones,  hard  structures,  bound  together  with 
ligaments,  and  forming  the  skeleton  which  is 
represented  here. 

In  that  skeleton  there  are  a  number  of  parts  to 
be  recognised.  The  long  series  of  bones,  beginning 
from  the  skull  and  ending  in  the  tail,  is  called  the 
spine,  and  those  in  front  are  the  ribs ;  and  then 
there  are  two  pairs  of  limbs,  one  before  and  one 
behind  ;  and  there  are  what  we  all  know  as  the 
fore-legs  and  the  hind -legs.  If  we  pursue  our 
researches  into  the  interior  of  this  animal,  we  find 
within  the  framework  of  the  skeleton  a  great 
cavity,  or  rather,  I  should  say,  two  great  cavities, 
— one  cavity  beginning  in  the  skull  and  running 
through  the  neck-bones,  along  the  spine,  and 
ending  in  the  tail,  containing  the  brain  and  the 
spinal  marrow,  which  are  extremely  important 
organs.  The  second  great  cavity,  commencing 
with  the  mouth,  contains  the  gullet,  the  stomach, 
the  long  intestine,  and  all  the  rest  of  those  internal 
apparatus  which  are  essential  for  digestion ;  and 
then  in  the  same  great  cavity,  there  are  lodged  the 
heart  and  all  the  great  vessels  going  from  it ;  and, 
besides  that  the  organs  of  respiration — the  lungs  : 
and  then  the  kidneys,  and  the  organs  of  repro- 
duction, and  so  on.  Let  us  now  endeavour  to 


308 


THE   CAUSES   OF    THE 


reduce  this  notion  of  a  horse  that  we  now  have,  to 
some  such  kind  of  simple  expressions  as  can  be  at 
once,  and  without  difficulty,  retained  in  the  mind, 
apart  from  all  minor  details.  If  I  make  a  trans- 
verse section,  that  is,  if  I  were  to  saw  a  dead 
horse  across,  I  should  find  that,  if  I  left  out  the 
details,  and  supposing  I  took  my  section  through 
the  anterior  region,  and  through  the  fore-limbs,  I 
should  have  here  this  kind  of  section  of  the  body 
(Fig.  1).  Here  would  be  the  upper  part  of  the 
animal — that  great 
mass  of  bones  that 
we  spoke  of  as  the 
spine  (a,  Fig.  1). 
Here  I  should  have 
the  alimentary 

canal  (b,  Fig.  1). 
Here  I  should  have 
the  heart  (c,  Fig. 
1) ;  and  then  you 
see,  there  would  be 
a  kind  of  double 
tube,  the  whole 
being  inclosed  with- 
in the  hide ;  the  spinal  marrow  would  be  placed 
in  the  upper  tube  (a,  Fig.  1),  and  in  the  lower 
tube  (d  d,  Fig.  1),  there  would  be  the  alimentary 
canal  (b),  and  the  heart  (c) ;  and  here  I  shall 
have  the  legs  proceeding  from  each  side.  For 
simplicity's  sake.  I  represent  them  merely  as 


Fig.i. 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          309 

stumps  (e  e,  Fig.  1).  Now  that  is  a  horse — as 
mathematicians  would  say — reduced  to  its  most 
simple  expression.  Carry  that  in  your  minds,  if 
you  please,  as  a  simplified  idea  of  the  structure  of 
the  horse.  The  considerations  which  I  have  now 
put  before  you  belong  to  what  we  technically  call 
the  "  Anatomy  "  of  the  horse.  Now,  suppose  we 
go  to  work  upon  these  several  parts, — flesh  and 
hair,  and  skin  and  bone,  and  lay  open  these  various 
organs  with  our  scalpels,  and  examine  them  by 
means  of  our  magnify  ing-glasses,  and  see  what  we 
can  make  of  them.  We  shall  find  that  the  flesh 
is  made  up  of  bundles  of  strong  fibres.  The  brain 
and  nerves,  too,  we  shall  find,  are  made  up  of 
fibres,  and  these  queer-looking  things  that  are 
called  ganglionic  corpuscles.  If  we  take  a  slice  of 
the  bone  and  examine  it,  we  shall  find  that  it  is 
very  like  this  diagram  of  a  section  of  the  bone  of 
on  ostrich,  though  differing,  of  course,  in  some 
details  ;  and  if  we  take  any  part  whatsoever  of  the 
tissue,  and  examine  it,  we  shall  find  it  all  has  a 
minute  structure,  visible  only  under  the  microscope. 
All  these  parts  constitute  microscopic  anatomy  or 
"Histology."  These  parts  are  constantly  being 
changed  ;  every  part  is  constantly  growing,  decay- 
ing, and  being  replaced  during  the  life  of  the  animal. 
The  tissue  is  constantly  replaced  by  new  material ; 
and  if  you  go  back  to  the  young  state  of  the  tissue 
in  the  case  of  muscle,  or  in  the  case  of  skin,  or  any 
of  the  organs  I  have  mentioned,  you  will  find  that 


310  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

they  all  come  under  the  same  condition.  Every 
one  of  these  microscopic  filaments  and  fibres  (I 
now  speak  merely  of  the  general  character  of  the 
whole  process) — every  one  of  these  parts — could 
be  traced  down  to  some  modification  of  a  tissue 
which  can  be  readily  divided  into  little  particles  of 
fleshy  matter,  of  that  substance  which  is  composed 
of  the  chemical  elements,  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen, 
and  nitrogen,  having  such  a  shape  as  this  (Fig.  2). 
These  particles,  into  which  all  primitive  tissues 
break  up,  are  called  cells.  If  I  were  to  make  a 
section  of  a  piece  of  the  skin  of  my 
hand,  I  should  find  that  it  was 
made  up  of  these  cells.  If  I 
examine  the  fibres  which  form  the 
various  organs  of  all  living  animals, 
I  should  find  that  all  of  them,  at 
one  time  or  other,  had  been  formed 
out  of  a  substance  consisting  of  similar  elements  ; 
so  that  you  see,  just  as  we  reduced  the  whole  body 
in  the  gross  to  that  sort  of  simple  expression  given 
in  Fig.  1,  so  we  may  reduce  the  whole  of  the 
microscopic  structural  elements  to  a  form  of  even 
greater  simplicity  ;  just  as  the  plan  of  the  whole 
body  may  be  so  represented  in  a  sense  (Fig.  1),  so 
the  primary  structure  of  every  tissue  may  be 
represented  by  a  mass  of  cells  (Fig.  2). 

Having  thus,  in  this  sort  of  general  way, 
sketched  to  you  what  I  may  call,  perhaps,  the 
architecture  of  the  body  of  the  horse  (what  we 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    311 

term  technically  its  Morphology),  I  must  now  turn 
to  another  aspect.  A  horse  is  not  a  mere  dead 
structure  :  it  is  an  active,  living,  working  machine. 
Hitherto  we  have,  as  it  were,  been  looking  at  a 
steam-engine  with  the  fires  out,  and  nothing  in  the 
boiler;  but  the  body  of  the  living  animal  is  a 
beautifully-formed  active  machine,  and  every  part 
has  its  different  work  to  do  in  the  working  of  that 
machine,  which  is  what  we  call  its  life.  The 
horse,  if  you  see  him  after  his  day's  work  is  done, 
is  cropping  the  grass  in  the  fields,  as  it  may  be,  or 
munching  the  oats  in  his  stable.  What  is  he 
doing  ?  His  jaws  are  working  as  a  mill — and  a 
very  complex  mill  too — grinding  the  corn,  or 
crushing  the  grass  to  a  pulp.  As  soon  as  that 
operation  has  taken  place,  the  food  is  passed  down 
to  the  stomach,  and  there  it  is  mixed  with  the 
chemical  fluid  called  the  gastric  juice,  a  substance 
which  has  the  peculiar  property  of  making  soluble 
and  dissolving  out  the  nutritious  matter  in  the 
grass,  and  leaving  behind  those  parts  which  are 
not  nutritious ;  so  that  you  have,  first,  the  mill, 
then  a  sort  of  chemical  digester ;  and  then  the 
food,  thus  partially  dissolved,  is  carried  back 
by  the  muscular  contractions  of  the  intestines  into 
the  hinder  parts  of  the  body,  while  the  soluble 
portions  are  taken  up  into  the  blood.  The  blood 
is  contained  in  a  vast  system  of  pipes,  spreading 
through  the  whole  body,  connected  with  a  force- 
pump, — the  heart, — which,  by  its  position  and  by 

49 


312  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

the  contractions  of  its  valves,  keeps  the  blood 
constantly  circulating  in  one  direction,  never 
allowing  it  to  rest  ;  and  then,  by  means  of  this 
circulation  of  the  blood,  laden  as  it  is  with  the 
products  of  digestion,  the  skin,  the  flesh,. the  hair, 
and  every  other  part  of  the  body,  draws  from  it 
that  which  it  wants,  and  every  one  of  these  organs 
derives  those  materials  which  are  necessary  to 
enable  it  to  do  its  work. 

The  action  of  each  of  these  organs,  the  per- 
formance of  each  of  these  various  duties,  involve 
in  their  operation  a  continual  absorption  of  the 
matters  necessary  for  their  support,  from  the 
blood,  and  a  constant  formation  of  waste  products, 
which  are  returned  to  the  blood,  and  conveyed  by 
it  to  the  lungs  and  the  kidneys,  which  are  organs 
that  have  allotted  to  them  the  office  of  extracting, 
separating,  and  getting  rid  of  these  waste  products  ; 
and  thus  the  general  nourishment,  labour,  and 
repair  of  the  whole  machine  are  kept  up  with  order 
and  regularity.  But  not  only  is  it  a  machine 
which  feeds  and  appropriates  to  its  own  support 
the  nourishment  necessary  to  its  existence — it  is 
an  engine  for  locomotive  purposes.  The  horse 
desires  to  go  from  one  place  to  another ;  and  to 
enable  it  to  do  this,  it  has  those  strong  contractile 
bundles  of  muscles  attached  to  the  bones  of  its 
limbs,  which  are  put  in  motion  by  means  of  a  sort 
of  telegraphic  apparatus  formed  by  the  brain  and 
the  great  spinal  cord  running  through  the  spine  or 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          313 

backbone ;  and  to  this  spinal  cord  are  attached  a 
number  of  fibres  termed  nerves,  which  proceed  to 
all  parts  of  the  structure.  By  means  of  these  the 
eyes,  nose,  tongue,  and  skin — all  the  organs  of  per- 
ception— transmit  impressions  or  sensations  to  the 
brain,  which  acts  as  a  sort  of  great  central  tele- 
graph-office, receiving  impressions  and  sending 
messages  to  all  parts  of  the  body,  and  putting  in 
motion  the  muscles  necessary  to  accomplish  any 
movement  that  may  be  desired.  So  that  you  have 
here  an  extremely  complex  and  beautifully-pro- 
portioned machine,  with  all  its  parts  working 
harmoniously  together  towards  one  common 
object — the  preservation  of  the  life  of  the 
animal. 

Now,  note  this :  the  horse  makes  up  its  waste 
by  feeding,  and  its  food  is  grass  or  oats,  or  perhaps 
other  vegetable  products ;  therefore,  in  the  long 
run,  the  source  of  all  this  complex  machinery  lies  in 
the  vegetable  kingdom.  But  where  does  the  grass, 
or  the  oat,  or  any  other  plant,  obtain  this  nourish- 
ing food-producing  material  ?  At  first  it  is  a  little 
seed,  which  soon  begins  to  draw  into  itself  from 
the  earth  and  the  surrounding  air  matters  which 
in  themselves  contain  no  vital  properties  what- 
ever; it  absorbs  into  its  own  substance  water, 
an  inorganic  body;  it  draws  into  its  substance 
carbonic  acid,  an  inorganic  matter  ;  and  ammonia, 
another  inorganic  matter,  found  in  the  air;  and 
then,  by  some  wonderful  chemical  process,  the 


314  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

details  of  which  chemists  do  not  yet  understand, 
though  they  are  near  foreshadowing  them,  it 
combines  them  into  one  substance,  which  is  known 
to  us  as  "  Protein,"  a  complex  compound  of  carbon, 
hydrogen,  oxygen,  and  nitrogen,  which  alone  pos- 
sesses the  property  of  manifesting  vitality  and  of 
permanently  supporting  animal  life.  So  that,  you 
see,  the  waste  products  of  the  animal  economy, 
the  effete  materials  which  are  continually  being 
thrown  off  by  all  living  beings,  in  the  form  of 
organic  matters,  are  constantly  replaced  by  sup- 
plies of  the  necessary  repairing  and  rebuilding 
materials  drawn  from  the  plants,  which  in  their 
turn  manufacture  them,  so  to  speak,  by  a 
mysterious  combination  of  those  same  inorganic 
materials. 

Let  us  trace  out  the  history  of  the  horse  in 
another  direction.  After  a  certain  time,  as  the 
result  of  sickness  or  disease,  the  effect  of  accident, 
or  the  consequence  of  old  age,  sooner  or  later,  the 
animal  dies.  The  multitudinous  operations  of 
this  beautiful  mechanism  flag  in  their  perform- 
ance, the  horse  loses  its  vigour,  and  after  passing 
through  the  curious  series  of  changes  comprised 
in  its  formation  and  preservation,  it  finally  decays, 
and  ends  its  life  by  going  back  into  that  inorganic 
world  from  which  all  but  an  inappreciable  fraction 
of  its  substance  was  derived.  Its  bones  become 
mere  carbonate  and  phosphate  of  lime  ;  the  matter 
of  its  flesh,  and  of  its  other  parts,  becomes,  in  the 


XI     PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    315 

long  run,  converted  into  carbonic  acid,  into  water, 
and  into  ammonia.  You  will  now,  perhaps,  under- 
stand the  curious  relation  of  the  animal  with  the 
plant,  of  the  organic  with  the  inorganic  world, 
which  is  shown  in  this  diagram. 


CARBONIC  ACID. 


Inorganic  World 

WATER. 


Vegetable  World 


Animal  World 


The  plant  gathers  these  inorganic  materials 
together  and  makes  them  up  into  its  own 
substance.  The  animal  eats  the  plant  and  appro- 
priates the  nutritious  portions  to  its  own  susten- 
ance, rejects  and  gets  rid  of  the  useless  matters ; 
and,  finally,  the  animal  itself  dies,  and  its  whole 
body  is  decomposed  and  returned  into  the  inorganic 
world.  There  is  thus  a  constant  circulation  from 
one  to  the  other,  a  continual  formation  of  organic 
life  from  inorganic  matters,  and  as  constant 
a  return  of  the  matter  of  living  bodies  to  the 
inorganic  world ;  so  that  the  materials  of  which 


316  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

our  bodies  are  composed  are  largely,  in  all 
probability,  the  substances  which  constituted  the 
matter  of  long  extinct  creations,  but  which  have 
in  the  interval  constituted  a  part  of  the  inorganic 
world. 

Thus  we  come  to  the  conclusion,  strange  at  first 
sight,  that  the  MATTER  constituting  the  living 
world  is  identical  with  that  which  forms  the 
inorganic  world.  And  not  less  true  is  it  that, 
remarkable  as  are  the  powers  or,  in  other  words, 
as  are  the  FORCES  which  are  exerted  by  living 
beings,  yet  all  these  forces  are  either  identical 
with  those  which  exist  in  the  inorganic  world,  or 
they  are  convertible  into  them  ;  I  mean  in  just  the 
same  sense  as  the  researches  of  physical  philo- 
sophers have  shown  that  heat  is  convertible  into 
electricity,  that  electricity  is  convertible  into 
magnetism,  magnetism  into  mechanical  force  or 
chemical  force,  and  any  one  of  them  with  the 
other,  each  being  measurable  in  terms  of  the  other, 
— even  so,  I  say,  that  great  law  is  applicable  to 
the  living  world.  Consider  why  is  the  skeleton  of 
this  horse  capable  of  supporting  the  masses  of 
flesh  and  the  various  organs  forming  the  living 
body,  unless  it  is  because  of  the  action  of  the  same 
forces  of  cohesion  which  combines  together  the 
particles  of  matter  composing  this  piece  of  chalk  ? 
What  is  there  in  the  muscular  contractile  power 
of  the  animal  but  the  force  which  is  expressible, 
and  which  is  in  a  certain  sense  convertible,  into 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE     317 

the  force  of  gravity  which  it  overcomes  ?  Or,  if 
you  go  to  more  hidden  processes,  in  what  does  the 
process  of  digestion  differ  from  those  processes 
which  are  carried  on  in  the  laboratory  of  the 
chemist  ?  Even  if  we  take  the  most  recondite 
and  most  complex  operations  of  animal  life — those 
of  the  nervous  system,  these  of  late  years  have 
been  shown  to  be — I  do  not  say  identical  in  any 
sense  with  the  electrical  processes — but  this  has 
been  shown,  that  they  are  in  some  way  or  other 
associated  with  them ;  that  is  to  say,  that  every 
amount  of  nervous  action  is  accompanied  by  a 
certain  amount  of  electrical  disturbance  in  the 
particles  of  the  nerves  in  which  that  nervous 
action  is  carried  on.  In  this  way  the  nervous 
action  is  related  to  electricity  in  the  same  way 
that  heat  is  related  to  electricity  ;  and  the  same 
sort  of  argument  which  demonstrates  the  two  latter 
to  be  related  to  one  another  shows  that  the  nervous 
forces  are  correlated  to  electricity  ;  for  the  experi- 
ments of  M.  Dubois  Reymond  and  others  have 
shown  that  whenever  a  nerve  is  in  a  state  of 
excitement,  sending  a  message  to  the  muscles  or 
conveying  an  impression  to  the  brain,  there  is  a 
disturbance  of  the  electrical  condition  of  that 
nerve  which  does  not  exist  at  other  times ;  and 
there  are  a  number  of  other  facts  and  phenomena 
of  that  sort ;  so  that  we  come  to  the  broad  con- 
clusion that  not  only  as  to  living  matter  itself,  but 
as  to  the  forces  that  matter  exerts,  there  is  a  close 


318  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

relationship  between  the  organic  and  the  inorganic 
world — the  difference  between  them  arising  from 
the  diverse  combination  and  disposition  of  identical 
forces,  and  not  from  any  primary  diversity,  so  far 
as  we  can  see. 

I  said  just  now  that  the  horse  eventually  died 
and  became  converted  into  the  same  inorganic 
substances  from  whence  all  but  an  inappreciable 
fraction  of  its  substance  demonstrably  originated, 
so  that  the  actual  wanderings  of  matter  are  as 
remarkable  as  the  transmigrations  of  the  soul 
fabled  by  Indian  tradition.  But  before  death  has 
occurred,  in  the  one  sex  or  the  other,  and  in  fact 
in  both,  certain  products  or  parts  of  the  organism 
have  been  set  free,  certain  parts  of  the  organisms 
of  the  two  sexes  have  come  into  contact  with  one 
another,  and  from  that  conjunction,  from  that 
union  which  then  takes  place,  there  results  the 
formation  of  a  new  being.  At  stated  times  the 
rnare,  from  a  particular  part  of  the  interior  of  her 
body,  called  the  ovary,  gets  rid  of  a  minute 
particle  of  matter  comparable  in  all  essential 
respects  with  that  which  we  called  a  cell  a  little 
while  since,  which  cell  contains  a  kind  of  nucleus 
in  its  centre,  surrounded  by  a  clear  space  and  by  a 
viscid  mass  of  protein  substance  (Fig.  2) ;  and 
though  it  is  different  in  appearance  from  the  eggs 
which  we  are  mostly  acquainted  with,  it  is  really 
an  egg.  After  a  time  this  minute  particle  of 
matter,  which  may  only  be  a  small  fraction  of  a 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         319 

grain  in  weight,  undergoes  a  series  of  changes, — 
wonderful,  complex  changes.  Finally,  upon  its 
surface  there  is  fashioned  a  little  elevation,  which 
afterwards  becomes  divided  and  marked  by  a 
groove.  The  lateral  boundaries  of  the  groove 
extend  upwards  and  downwards,  and  at  length 
give  rise  to  a  double  tube.  In  the  upper  and 
smaller  tube  the  spinal  marrow  and  brain  are 
fashioned  ;  in  the  lower,  the  alimentary  canal  and 
heart ;  and  at  length  two  pairs  of  buds  shoot  out  at 
the  sides  of  the  body,  and  they  are  the  rudiments 
of  the  limbs.  In  fact  a  true  drawing  of  a  section 
of  the  embryo  in  this  state  would  in  all  essehtial 
respects  resemble  that  diagram  of  a  horse  reduced 
to  its  simplest  expression,  which  I  first  placed 
before  you  (Fig.  1). 

Slowly  and  gradually  these  changes  take  place. 
The  whole  of  the  body,  at  first,  can  be  broken  up 
into  "cells,"  which  become  in  one  place  meta- 
morphosed into  muscle, — in  another  place  into 
gristle  and  bone, — in  another  place  into  fibrous 
tissue, — and  in  another  into  hair ;  every  part 
becoming  gradually  and  slowly  fashioned,  as  if 
there  were  an  artificer  at  work  in  each  of  these 
complex  structures  that  I  have  mentioned.  This 
embryo,  as  it  is  called,  then  passes  into  other  con- 
ditions. I  should  tell  you  that  there  is  a  time  when 
the  embryos  of  neither  dog,  nor  horse,  nor  porpoise, 
nor  monkey,  nor  man,  can  be  distinguished  by  any 
essential  feature  one  from  the  other ;  there  is  a 


320  THE  CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

time  when  they  each  and  all  of  them  resemble 
this  one  of  the  dog.  But  as  development 
advances,  all  the  parts  acquire  their  speciality, 
till  at  length  you  have  the  embryo  converted  into 
the  form  of  the  parent  from  which  it  started.  So 
that  you  see,  this  living  animal,  this  horse,  begins 
its  existence  as  a  minute  particle  of  nitrogenous 
matter,  which,  being  supplied  with  nutriment 
(derived,  as  I  have  shown,  from  the  inorganic 
world),  grows  up  according  to  the  special  type  and 
construction  of  its  parents,  works  and  undergoes  a 
constant  waste,  and  that  waste  is  made  good  by 
nutriment  derived  from  the  inorganic  world  ;  the 
waste  given  off  in  this  way  being  directly  added 
to  the  inorganic  world.  Eventually  the  animal 
itself  dies,  and,  by  the  process  of  decomposition, 
its  whole  body  is  returned  to  those  conditions 
of  inorganic  matter  in  which  its  substance 
originated. 

This,  then,  is  that  which  is  true  of  every  living 
form,  from  the  lowest  plant  to  the  highest  animal 
— to  man  himself.  You  might  define  the  life  of 
every  one  in  exactly  the  same  terms  as  those 
which  I  have  now  used ;  the  difference  between 
the  highest  and  the  lowest  being  simply  in  the 
complexity  of  the  developmental  changes,  the 
variety  of  the  structural  forms,  and  the  diversity 
of  the  physiological  functions  which  are  exerted 
by  each. 

If  I  were  to  take  an  oak  tree,  as  a  specimen  of 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          321 

the  plant  world,  I  should  find  that  it  originated  in 
an  acorn,  which,  too,  commenced  in  a  cell ;  the 
acorn  is  placed  in  the  ground,  and  it  very  speedily 
begins  to  absorb  the  inorganic  matters  I  have 
named,  adds  enormously  to  its  bulk,  and  we  can 
see  it,  year  after  year,  extending  itself  upward 
and  downward,  attracting  and  appropriating  to 
itself  inorganic  materials,  which  it  vivifies,  and 
eventually,  as  it  ripens,  gives  off  its  own  proper 
acorns,  which  again  run  the  same  course.  But  I 
need  not  multiply  examples, — from  the  highest  to 
the  lowest  the  essential  features  of  life  are  the 
same  as  I  have  described  in  each  of  these  cases. 

So  much,  then,  for  these  particular  features  of 
the  organic  world,  which  you  can  understand  and 
comprehend,  so  long  as  you  confine  yourself  to  one 
sort  of  living  being,  and  study  that  only. 

But,  as  you  know,  horses  are  not  the  only  living 
creatures  in  the  world ;  and  again,  horses,  like  all 
other  animals,  have  certain  limits — are  confined 
to  a  certain  area  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  on 
which  we  live, — and,  as  that  is  the  simpler  matter, 
I  may  take  that  first.  In  its  wild  state,  and  before 
the  discovery  of  America,  when  the  natural  state 
of  things  was  interfered  with  by  the  Spaniards,  the 
horse  was  only  to  be  found  in  parts  of  the  earth 
which  are  known  to  geographers  as  the  Old 
World ;  that  is  to  say,  you  might  meet  with 
horses  in  Europe,  Asia,  or  Africa ;  but  there  were 
none  in  Australia,  and  there  were  none  whatsoever 


322  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  Xl 

in  the  whole  continent  of  America,  from  Labrador 
down  to  Cape  Horn.  This  is  an  empirical  fact,  and 
it  is  what  is  called,  stated  in  the  way  I  have 
given  it  you,  the  "  Geographical  Distribution  "  of 
the  horse. 

Why  horses  should  be  found  in  Europe,  Asia, 
and  Africa,  and  not  in  America,  is  not  obvious ; 
the  explanation  that  the  conditions  of  life  in 
America  are  unfavourable  to  their  existence,  and 
that,  therefore,  they  had  not  been  created  there, 
evidently  does  not  apply  ;  for  when  the  invading 
Spaniards,  or  our  own  yeomen  farmers,  conveyed 
horses  to  these  countries  for  their  own  use,  they 
were  found  to  thrive  well  and  multiply  very 
rapidly ;  and  many  are  even  now  running  wild  in 
those  countries,  and  in  a  perfectly  natural  condition. 
Now,  suppose  we  were  to  do  for  every  animal 
what  we  have  here  done  for  the  horse, — that  is, 
to  mark  off  and  distinguish  the  particular  district 
or  region  to  which  each  belonged ;  and  supposing 
we  tabulated  all  these  results,  that  would  be 
called  the  Geographical  Distribution  of  animals, 
while  a  corresponding  study  of  plants  would  yield 
as  a  result  the  Geographical  Distribution  of 
plants. 

I  pass  on  from  that  now,  as  I  merely  wished  to 
explain  to  you  what  I  meant  by  the  use  of  the 
term  "  Geographical  Distribution."  As  I  said, 
there  is  another  aspect,  and  a  much  more  im- 
portant one,  and  that  is,  the  relations  of  the  various 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC   NATURE         323 

animals  to  one  another.  The  horse  is  a  very  well- 
defined  matter-of-fact  sort  of  animal,  and  we  are 
all  pretty  familiar  with  its  structure.  I  dare  say 
it  may  have  struck  you,  that  it  resembles  very 
much  no  other  member  of  the  animal  kingdom, 
except  perhaps  the  zebra  or  the  ass.  But  let  me 
ask  you  to  look  along  these  diagrams.  Here  is 
the  skeleton  of  the  horse,  and  here  the  skeleton 
of  the  dog.  You  will  notice  that  we  have  in  the 
horse  a  skull,  a  backbone  and  ribs,  shoulder-blades 
and  haunch-bones.  In  the  fore-limb,  one  upy  er 
arm-bone,  two  fore  arm-bones,  wrist-bones  (wrongly 
called  knee),  and  middle  hand-bones,  ending  in 
the  three  bones  of  a  finger,  the  last  of  which  is 
sheathed  in  the  horny  hoof  of  the  fore-foot  :  in  the 
hind-limb,  one  thigh-bone,  two  leg-bones,  ankle- 
bones,  and  middle  foot-bones,  ending  in  the  three 
bones  of  a  toe,  the  last  of  which  is  encased  in  the 
hoof  of  the  hind-foot.  Now  turn  to  the  dog's 
skeleton.  We  find  identically  the  same  bones,  but 
more  of  them,  there  being  more  toes  in  each  foot, 
and  hence  more  toe-bones. 

Well,  that  is  a  very  curious  thing  !  The  fact  is 
that  the  dog  and  the  horse — when  one  gets  a 
look  at  them  without  the  outward  impediments  of 
the  skin — are  found  to  be  made  in  very  much  the 
same  sort  of  fashion.  And  if  I  were  to  make  a 
transverse  section  of  the  dog,  I  should  find  the 
same  organs  that  I  have  already  shown  you  as 
forming  parts  of  the  horse.  Well,  here  is  another 


324  '       THE   CAUSES   OF   THE 


skeleton  —  that  of  a  kind  of  lemur  —  you  see  he 
has  just  the  same  bones  ;  and  if  I  were  to  make  a 
transverse  section  of  it,  it  would  be  just  the  same 
again.  In  your  mind's  eye  turn  him  round,  so  as 
to  put  his  backbone  in  a  position  inclined  obliquely 
upwards  and  forwards,  just  as  in  the  next  three 
diagrams,  which  represent  the  skeletons  of  an 
orang,  a  chimpanzee,  and  a  gorilla,  and  you  find 
you  have  no  trouble  in  identifying  the  bones 
throughout  ;  and  lastly  turn  to  the  end  of  the 
series,  the  diagram  representing  a  man's  skeleton, 
and  still  you  find  no  great  structural  feature 
essentially  altered.  There  are  the  same  bones  in 
the  same  relations.  From  the  horse  we  pass  on 
and  on,  with  gradual  steps  until  we  arrive  at  last 
at  the  highest  known  forms.  On  the  other  hand, 
take  the  other  line  of  diagrams,  and  pass  from  the 
horse  downwards  in  the  scale  to  this  fish  ;  and 
still,  though  the  modifications  are  vastly  greater, 
the  essential  framework  of  the  organisation 
remains  unchanged.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a 
porpoise  :  here  is  its  strong  backbone,  with  the 
cavity  running  through  it,  which  contains  the 
spinal  cord  ;  here  are  the  ribs,  here  the  shoulder- 
blade  ;  here  is  the  little  short  upper-arm  bone, 
here  are  the  two  forearm  bones,  the  wrist-bone, 
and  the  finger-bones. 

Strange,  is  it  not,  that  the  porpoise  should  have 
in  this  queer-looking  affair  —  its  flapper  (as  it  is 
called),  the  same  fundamental  elements  as  the 


xi  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          325 

fore-leg  of  the  horse  or  the  dog,  or  the  ape  or 
man ;  and  here  you  will  notice  a  very  curious 
thing, — the  hinder  limbs  are  absent.  Now,  let 
us  make  another  jump.  Let  us  go  to  the  codfish  : 
here  you  see  is  the  forearm,  in  this  large  pectoral  fin 
— carrying  your  mind's  eye  onward  from  the  flapper 
of  the  porpoise.  And  here  you  have  the  hinder 
limbs  restored  in  the  shape  of  these  ventral  fins. 
If  I  were  to  make  a  transverse  section  of  this,  I 
should  find  just  the  same  organs  that  we  have 
before  noticed.  So  that,  you  see,  there  comes  out 
this  strange  conclusion  as  the  result  of  our 
investigations,  that  the  horse,  when  examined 
and  compared  with  other  animals,  is  found  by  no 
means  to  stand  alone  in  Nature  ;  but  that  there 
are  an  enormous  number  of  other  creatures  which 
have  backbones,  ribs,  and  legs,  and  other  parts 
arranged  in  the  same  general  manner,  and  in 
all  their  formation  exhibiting  the  same  broad 
peculiarities. 

I  am  sure  that  you  cannot  have  followed  me 
even  in  this  extremely  elementary  exposition  of 
the  structural  relations  of  animals,  without  seeing 
what  I  have  been  driving  at  all  through,  which  is, 
to  show  you  that,  step  by  step,  naturalists  have 
come  to  the  idea  of  a  unity  of  plan,  or  conformity 
of  construction,  among  animals  which  appeared  at 
first  sight  to  be  extremely  dissimilar. 

And  here  you  have  evidence  of  such  a  unity  of 
plan  among  all  the  animals  which  have  backbones, 


326  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

L  ,^,^/and  which  we  technically  call  Vcrtebrata.  But 
there  are  multitudes  of  other  animals,  such  as 
crabs,  lobsters,  spiders,  and  so  on,  which  we  term 

PAnnulosa.  In  these  I  could  not  point  out  to  you  the 
parts  that  correspond  with  those  of  the  horse, — 
vn  vl  the  backbone,  for  instance, — as  they  are  constructed 
upon  a  very  different  principle,  which  is  also 
common  to  all  of  them ;  that  is  to  say,  the  lobster, 
the  spider,  and  the  centipede,  have  a  common 
plan  running  through  their  whole  arrangement, 
in  just  the  same  way  that  the  horse,  the  dog, 
and  the  porpoise  assimilate  to  each  other. 

Yet  other  creatures — whelks,  cuttlefishes, 
oysters,  snails,  and  all  their  tribe  (Mollusca) — 
resemble  one  another  in  the  same  way,  but  differ 
from  both  Vertebrata  and  Annulosa  ;  and  the  like 
is  true  of  the  animals  called  -Ccelentcrata  (Polypes) 
and  Protozoa  (animalcules  and  sponges). 

Now,  by  pursuing  this  sort  of  comparison, 
naturalists  have  arrived  at  the  conviction  that 
there  are, — some  think  five,  and  some  seven, — but 
certainly  not  more  than  the  latter  number — and 
perhaps  it  is  simpler  to  assume  five — distinct  plans 
or  constructions  in  the  whole  of  the  animal  world  ; 
and  that  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  species 
of  creatures  on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  are  all 
reducible  to  those  five,  or,  at  most,  seven,  plans  of 
organisation. 

But  can  we  go  no  further  than  that  ?  When 
one  has  got  so  far,  one  is  tempted  to  go  on  a  step 


XI     PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    327 

and  inquire  whether  we  cannot  go  back  yet 
further  and  bring  down  the  whole  to  modifications 
of  one  primordial  unit.  The  anatomist  cannot  do 
this  ;  but  if  he  call  to  his  aid  the  study  of  develop- 
ment, he  can  do  it.  For  we  shall  find  that,  dis- 
tinct as  those  plans  are,  whether  it  be  a  porpoise 
or  man,  or  lobster,  or  any  of  those  other  kinds  I 
have  mentioned,  every  one  begins  its  existence 
with  one  and  the  same  primitive  form, — that  of 
the  egg,  consisting,  as  we  have  seen,  of  a  nitro- 
genous substance,  having  a  small  particle  or  nucleus 
in  the  centre  of  it.  Furthermore,  the  earlier 
changes  of  each  are  substantially  the  same.  And 
it  is  in  this  that  lies  that  true  "  unity  of  organi- 
sation "  of  the  animal  kingdom  which  has  been 
guessed  at  and  fancied  for  many  years  ;  but  which 
it  has  been  left  to  the  present  time  to  be  demon- 
strated by  the  careful  study  of  development.  But 
is  it  possible  to  go  another  step  further  still,  and 
to  show  that  in  the  same  way  the  whole  of  the 
organic  world  is  reducible  to  one  primitive  con- 
dition of  form  ?  Is  there  among  the  plants  the 
same  primitive  form  of  organisation,  and  is  that 
identical  with  that  of  the  animal  kingdom  ?  The 
reply  to  that  question,  too,  is  not  uncertain  or 
doubtful.  It  is  now  proved  that  every  plant 
begins  its  existence  under  the  same  form  ;  that  is 
to  say,  in  that  of  a  cell — a  particle  of  nitrogenous 
matter  having  substantially  the  same  conditions. 
So  that  if  you  trace  back  the  oak  to  its  first 

60 


328  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

germ,  or  a  man,  or  a  horse,  or  lobster,  or  oyster,  or 
any  other  animal  you  choose  to  name,  you  shall  find 
each  and  all  of  these  commencing  their  existence 
in  forms  essentially  similar  to  each  other ;  and, 
furthermore,  that  the  first  processes  of  growth, 
and  many  of  the  subsequent  modifications,  are 
essentially  the  same  in  principle  in  almost  all. 

In  conclusion,  let  me,  in  a  few  words,  recapitu- 
late the  positions  which  I  have  laid  down.  And 
you  must  understand  that  I  have  not  been 
talking  mere  theory ;  I  have  been  speaking  of 
matters  which  are  as  plainly  demonstrable  as  the 
commonest  propositions  of  Euclid — of  facts  that 
must  form  the  basis  of  all  speculations  and  beliefs 
in  Biological  science.  We  have  gradually  traced 
down  all  organic  forms,  or,  in  other  words,  we  have 
analysed  the  present  condition  of  animated  nature, 
until  we  found  that  each  species  took  its  origin  in 
a  form  similar  to  that  under  which  all  the  others 
commenced  their  existence.  We  have  found  the 
whole  of  the  vast  array  of  living  forms  with  which 
we  are  surrounded,  constantly  growing,  increasing, 
decaying  and  disappearing  ;  the  animal  constantly 
attracting,  modifying,  and  applying  to  its  susten- 
ance the  matter  of  the  vegetable  kingdom,  which 
derived  its  support  from  the  absorption  and  con- 
version of  inorganic  matter.  And  so  constant  and 
universal  is  this  absorption,  waste,  and  repro- 
duction, that  it  may  be  said  with  perfect  certainty 
that  there  is  left  in  no  one  of  our  bodies  at  the 


XI     PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    329 

present  moment  a  millionth  part  of  the  matter  of 
which  they  were  originally  formed!  We  have 
seen,  again,  that  not  only  is  the  living  matter 
derived  from  the  inorganic  world,  but  that  the 
forces  of  that  matter  are  all  of  them  correlative 
with  and  convertible  into  those  of  inorganic 
nature. 

This,  for  our  present  purposes,  is  the  best  view 
of  the  present  condition  of  organic  nature  which  I 
can  lay  before  you  :  it  gives  you  the  great  outlines 
of  a  vast  picture,  which  you  must  fill  up  by  your 
own  study. 

In  the  next  lecture  I  shall  endeavour  in  the 
same  way  to  go  back  into  the  past,  and  to  sketch 
in  the  same  broad  manner  the  history  of  life  in 
epochs  preceding  our  own. 


II 

THE  PAST   CONDITION   OF  ORGANIC   NATURE. 

IN  the  lecture  which,  I  delivered  last  Monday 
evening,  I  endeavoured  to  sketch  in  a  very  brief 
manner,  but  as  well  as  the  time  at  my  disposal 
would  permit,  the  present  condition  of  organic 
nature,  meaning  by  that  large  title  simply  an 
indication  of  the  great,  broad,  and  general 
principles  which  are  to  be  discovered  by  those 
who  look  attentively  at  the  phenomena  of  organic 
nature  as  at  present  displayed.  The  general 
result  of  our  investigations  might  be  summed  up 
thus  :  we  found  that  the  multiplicity  of  the  forms 
of  animal  life,  great  as  that  may  be,  may  be 
reduced  to  a  comparatively  few  primitive  plans  or 
types  of  construction  ;  that  a  further  study  of  the 
development  of  those  different  forms  revealed  to 
us  that  they  were  again  reducible,  until  we  at 
last  brought  the  infinite  diversity  of  animal,  and 
even  vegetable  life,  down  to  the  primordial  form 
of  a  single  cell. 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF  ORGANIC   NATURE          331 

We  found  that  our  analysis  of  the  organic 
world,  whether  animals  or  plants,  showed,  in  the 
long  run,  that  they  might  both  be  reduced  into, 
and  were,  in  fact,  composed  of,  the  same  con- 
stituents. And  we  saw  that  the  plant  obtained 
the  materials  constituting  its  substance  by  a 
peculiar  combination  of  matters  belonging  entirely 
to  the  inorganic  world  ;  that,  then,  the  animal  was 
constantly  appropriating  the  nitrogenous  matters 
of  the  plant  to  its  own  nourishment,  and  returning 
them  back  to  the  inorganic  world,  in  what  we 
spoke  of  as  its  waste  ;  and  that  finally,  when  the 
animal  ceased  to  exist,  the  constituents  of  its  body 
were  dissolved  and  transmitted  to  that  inorganic 
world  whence  they  had  been  at  first  abstracted. 
,  Thus  we  saw  in  both  the  blade  of  grass  and  the 
horse  but  the  same  elements  differently  combined 
and  arranged.  We  discovered  a  continual  circula- 
tion going  on, — the  plant  drawing  in  the  elements 
of  inorganic  nature  and  combining  them  into  food 
for  the  animal  creation ;  the  animal  borrowing 
from  the  plant  the  matter  for  its  own  support, 
giving  off  during  its  life  products  which  returned 
immediately  to  the  inorganic  world;  and  that, 
eventually,  the  constituent  materials  of  the  whole 
structure  of  both  animals  and  plants  were  thus 
returned  to  their  original  source  :  there  was  a 
constant  passage  from  one  state  of  existence  to 
another,  and  a  returning  back  again. 

Lastly,  when   we   endeavoured    to   form  some 


332  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

notion  of  the  nature  of  the  forces  exercised  by 
living  beings,  we  discovered  that  they — if  not 
capable  of  being  subjected  to  the  same  minute 
analysis  as  the  constituents  of  those  beings  them- 
selves— that  they  were  correlative  with — that  they 
were  the  equivalents  of  the  forces  of  inorganic 
nature — that  they  were,  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
term  is  now  used,  convertible  with  them.  That  was 
our  general  result. 

And  now,  leaving  the  Present,  I  must  endeavour 
in  the  same  manner  to  put  before  you  the  facts 
that  are  to  be  discovered  in  the  Past  history  of 
the  living  world,  in  the  past  conditions  of  organic 
nature.  We  have,  to-night,  to  deal  with  the  facts 
of  that  history — a  history  involving  periods  of 
time  before  which  our  mere  human  records  sink 
into  utter  insignificance — a  history  the  variety  and 
physical  magnitude  of  whose  events  cannot  even 
be  foreshadowed  by  the  history  of  human  life  and 
human  phenomena — a  history  of  the  most  varied 
and  complex  character. 

We  must  deal  with  the  history,  then,  in  the 
first  place,  as  we  should  deal  with  all  other 
histories.  The  historical  student  knows  that  his 
first  business  should  be  to  inquire  into  the  validity 
of  his  evidence,  and  the  nature  of  the  record  in 
which  the  evidence  is  contained,  that  he  may  be 
able  to  form  a  proper  estimate  of  the  correctness 
of  the  conclusions  which  have  been  drawn  from 
that  evidence.  So,  here,  we  must  pass,  in  the  first 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         333 

place,  to  the  consideration  of  a  matter  which  may 
seem  foreign  to  the  question  under  discussion. 
We  must  dwell  upon  the  nature  of  the  records, 
and  the  credibility  of  the  evidence  they  contain ; 
we  must  look  to  the  completeness  or  incomplete- 
ness of  those  records  themselves,  before  we  turn  to 
that  which  they  contain  and  reveal.  The  question 
of  the  credibility  of  the  history,  happily  for  us, 
will  not  require  much  consideration,  for,  in  this 
history,  unlike  those  of  human  origin,  there  can 
be  no  cavilling,  no  differences  as  to  the  reality  and 
truth  of  the  facts  of  which  it  is  made  up ;  the 
facts  state  themselves,  and  are  laid  out  clearly 
before  us. 

But,  although  one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  of 
the  historical  student  is  cleared  out  of  our  path, 
there  are  other  difficulties — difficulties  in  rightly 
interpreting  the  facts  as  they  are  presented  to  us 
— which  may  be  compared  with  the  greatest 
difficulties  of  any  other  kinds  of  historical  study. 

What  is  this  record  of  the  past  history  of  the 
globe,  and  what  are  the  questions  which  are 
involved  in  an  inquiry  into  its  completeness  or 
incompleteness?  That  record  is  composed  of 
mud ;  and  the  question  which  we  have  to  investi- 
gate this  evening  resolves  itself  into  a  question  of 
the  formation  of  mud.  You  may  think,  perhaps, 
that  this  is  a  vast  step — of  almost  from  the 
sublime  to  the  ridiculous — from  the  contemplation 
of  the  history  of  the  past  ages  of  the  world's 


334  THE   CAUSES  OF   THE  xi 

existence  to  the  consideration  of  the  history  of  the 
formation  of  mud !  But,  in  Nature,  there  is 
nothing  mean  and  unworthy  of  attention ;  there  is 
nothing  ridiculous  or  contemptible  in  any  of  her 
works  ;  and  this  inquiry,  you  will  soon  see,  I  hope, 
takes  us  to  the  very  root  and  foundations  of  our 
subject. 

How,  then,  is  mud  formed  ?  Always,  with 
some  trifling  exceptions,  which  I  need  not  consider 
now — always,  as  the  result  of  the  action  of  water, 
wearing  down  and  disintegrating  the  surface  of 
the  earth  and  rocks  with  which  it  comes  in 
contact — pounding  and  grinding  it  down,  and 
carrying  the  particles  away  to  places  where  they 
cease  to  be  disturbed  by  this  mechanical  action, 
and  where  they  can  subside  and  rest.  For  the 
ocean,  urged  by  winds,  washes,  as  we  know,  a  long 
extent  of  coast,  and  every  wave,  loaded  as  it  is 
with  particles  of  sand  and  gravel  as  it  breaks 
upon  the  shore,  does  something  towards  the  dis- 
integrating process.  And  thus,  slowly  but  surely, 
the  hardest  rocks  are  gradually  ground  down  to  a 
powdery  substance ;  and  the  mud  thus  formed, 
coarser  or  finer,  as  the  case  may  be,  is  carried  by 
the  rush  of  the  tides,  or  currents,  till  it  reaches 
the  comparatively  deeper  parts  of  the  ocean,  in 
which  it  can  sink  to  the  bottom,  that  is,  to  parts 
where  there  is  a  depth  of  about  fourteen  or  fifteen 
fathoms,  a  depth  at  which  the  water  is,  usually, 
nearly  motionless,  and  in  which,  of  course,  the 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         335 

finer  particles  of  this  detritus,  or  mud  as  we  call 
it,  sinks  to  the  bottom. 

Or,  again,  if  you  take  a  river,  rushing  down 
from  its  mountain  sources,  brawling  over  the 
stones  and  rocks  that  intersect  its  path,  loosening, 
removing,  and  carrying  with  it  in  its  downward 
course  the  pebbles  and  lighter  matters  from  its 
banks,  it  crushes  and  pounds  down  the  rocks  and 
earths  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  the  wearing 
action  of  the  sea  waves.  The  matters  forming  the 
deposit  are  torn  from  the  mountain-side  and 
whirled  impetuously  into  the  valley,  more  slowly 
over  the  plain,  thence  into  the  estuary,  and  from 
the  estuary  they  are  swept  into  the  sea.  The 
coarser  and  heavier  fragments  are  obviously 
deposited  first,  that  is,  as  soon  as  the  current 
begins  to  lose  its  force  by  becoming  amalgamated 
with  the  stiller  depths  of  the  ocean,  but  the  finer 
and  lighter  particles  are  carried  further  on,  and 
eventually  deposited  in  a  deeper  and  stiller  portion 
of  the  ocean. 

It  clearly  follows  from  this  that  mud  gives  us  a 
chronology ;  for  it  is  evident  that  supposing  this, 
which  I  now  sketch,  to  be  the  sea  bottom,  and 
supposing  this  to  be  a  coast-line  ;  from  the  wash- 
ing action  of  the  sea  upon  the  rock,  wearing  and 
grinding  it  down  into  a  sediment  of  mud,  the  mud 
will  be  carried  down,  and,  at  length,  deposited  in 
the  deeper  parts  of  this  sea  bottom,  where  it  will 
form  a  layer ;  and  then,  while  that  first  layer  is 


336  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

hardening,  other  mud  which  is  coming  from  the 
same  source  will,  of  course,  be  carried  to  the  same 
place ;  and,  as  it  is  quite  impossible  for  it  to  get 
beneath  the  layer  already  there,  it  deposits  itself 
above  it,  and  forms  another  layer,  and  in  that 
way  you  gradually  have  layers  of  mud  constantly 
forming  and  hardening  one  above  the  other,  and 
conveying  a  record  of  time. 

It  is  a  necessary  result  of  the  operation  of  the 
law  of  gravitation  that  the  uppermost  layer  shall 
be  the  youngest  and  the  lowest  the  oldest,  and 
that  the  different  beds  shall  be  older  at  any 
particular  point  or  spot  in  exactly  the  ratio  of  their 
depth  from  the  surface.  So  that  if  they  were 
upheaved  afterwards,  and  you  had  a  series  of 
these  different  layers  of  mud,  converted  into  sand- 
stone, or  limestone,  as  the  case  might  be,  you 
might  be  sure  that  the  bottom  layer  was  deposited 
first,  and  that  the  upper  layers  were  formed  after- 
wards. Here,  you  see,  is  the  first  step  in  the  history 
— these  layers  of  mud  give  us  an  idea  of  time. 

The  whole  surface  of  the  earth, — I  speak 
broadly,  and  leave  out  minor  qualifications, — is 
made  up  of  such  layers  of  mud,  so  hard,  the 
majority  of  them,  that  we  call  them  rock  whether 
limestone  or  sandstone,  or  other  varieties  of  rock. 
And,  seeing  that  every  part  of  the  crust  of  the 
earth  is  made  up  in  this  way,  you  might  think 
that  the  determination  of  the  chronology,  the 
fixing  of  the  time  which  it  has  taken  to  form  this 


Xi      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    337 

crust  is  a  comparatively  simple  matter.  Take  a 
broad  average,  ascertain  how  fast  the  mud  is 
deposited  upon  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  or  in  the 
estuary  of  rivers  ;  take  it  to  be  an  inch,  or  two,  or 
three  inches  a  year,  or  whatever  you  may  roughly 
estimate  it  at ;  then  take  the  total  thickness  of 
the  whole  series  of  stratified  rocks,  which  geolo- 
gists estimate  at  twelve  or  thirteen  miles,  or  about 
seventy  thousand  feet,  make  a  sum  in  short 
division,  divide  the  total  thickness  by  that  of  the 
quantity  deposited  in  one  year,  and  the  result  will, 
of  course,  give  you  the  number  of  years  which  the 
crust  has  taken  to  form. 

Truly,  that  looks  a  very  simple  process !  It 
would  be  so  except  for  certain  difficulties,  the  very 
first  of  which  is  that  of  finding  how  rapidly 
sediments  are  deposited ;  but  the  main  difficulty 
— a  difficulty  which  renders  any  certain  calcula- 
tions of  such  a  matter  out  of  the  question — is 
this,  the  sea-bottom  on  which  the  deposit  takes 
place  is  continually  shifting. 

Instead  of  the  surface  of  the  earth  being  that 
stable,  fixed  thing  that  it  is  popularly  believed  to 
be,  being,  in  common  parlance,  the  very  emblem 
of  fixity  itself,  it  is  incessantly  moving,  and  is, 
in  fact,  as  unstable  as  the  surface  of  the  sea, 
except  that  its  undulations  are  infinitely  slower 
and  enormously  higher  and  deeper. 

Now,  what  is  the  effect  of  this  oscillation? 
Take  the  case  to  which  I  have  previously 


338 


THE   CAUSES   OF   THE 


referred.  The  finer  or  coarser  sediments  that 
are  carried  down  by  the  current  of  the  river, 
will  only  be  carried  out  a  certain  distance,  and 
eventually,  as  we  have  already  seen,  on  reaching 
the  stiller  part  of  the  ocean,  will  be  deposited  at 
the  bottom. 

Let  C  y  (Fig.  4)  be  the  sea-bottom,  y  D  the 
shore,  x  y  the  sea-level,  then  the  coarser  deposit 
will  subside  over  the  region  B,  the  finer  over  A, 
while  beyond  A  there  will  be  no  deposit  at  all  • 


Fig.4- 


and,  consequently,  no  record  will  be  kept,  simply 
because  no  deposit  is  going  on.  Now,  suppose 
that  the  whole  land,  C,  D,  which  we  have  regarded 
as  stationary,  goes  down,  as  it  does  so,  both  A  arid 
B  go  further  out  from  the  shore,  which  will  be  at 
y1 ;  scl,  y*,  being  the  new  sea-level.  The  con- 
sequence will  be  that  the  layer  of  mud  (A),  being 
now,  for  the  most  part,  further  than  the  force  of 
the  current  is  strong  enough  to  convey  even  the 
finest  ddbris,  will,  of  course,  receive  no  more 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         339 

deposits,  and  having  attained  a  certain  thickness 
will  now  grow  no  thicker. 

We  should  be  misled  in  taking  the  thickness  of 
that  layer,  whenever  it  may  be  exposed  to  our 
view,  as  a  record  of  time  in  the  manner  in  which 
we  are  now  regarding  this  subject,  as  it  would 
give  us  only  an  imperfect  and  partial  record : 
it  would  seem  to  represent  too  short  a  period  of 
time. 

Suppose,  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  land  (C  D) 
had  gone  on  rising  slowly  and  gradually — say  an 
inch  or  two  inches  in  the  course  of  a  century, — 
what  would  be  the  practical  effect  of  that  move- 
ment ?  Why,  that  the  sediment  A  and  B  which 
has  been  already  deposited,  would  eventually  be 
brought  nearer  to  the  shore-level  and  again  sub- 
jected to  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  sea ;  and  directly 
the  sea  begins  to  act  upon  it,  it  would  of  course 
soon  cut  up  and  carry  it  way,  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent,  to  be  re-deposited  further  out. 

Well,  as  there  is,  in  all  probability,  not  one  single 
spot  on  the  whole  surface  of  the  earth,  which  has 
not  been  up  and  down  in  this  way  a  great  many 
times,  it  follows  that  the  thickness  of  the  deposits 
formed  at  any  particular  spot  cannot  be  taken 
(even  supposing  we  had  at  first  obtained  correct 
data  as  to  the  rate  at  which  they  took  place),  as 
affording  reliable  information  as  to  the  period  of 
time  occupied  in  its  deposit.  So  that  you  see  it  is 
absolutely  necessary  from  these  facts,  seeing  that 


340  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

our  record  entirely  consists  of  accumulations  of 
mud,  superimposed  one  on  the  other ;  seeing  in 
the  next  place  that  any  particular  spots  on  which 
accumulations  have  occurred,  have  been  constantly 
moving  up  and  down,  and  sometimes  out  of  the 
reach  of  a  deposit,  and  at  other  times  its  own 
deposit  broken  up  and  carried  away,  it  follows  that 
our  record  must  be  in  the  highest  degree  imper- 
fect, and  we  have  hardly  a  trace  left  of  thick 
deposits,  or  any  definite  knowledge  of  the  area 
that  they  occupied,  in  a  great  many  cases.  And 
mark  this  !  That  supposing  even  that  the  whole 
surface  of  the  earth  had  been  accessible  to  the 
geologist, — that  man  had  had  access  to  every  part 
of  the  earth,  and  had  made  sections  of  the  whole, 
and  put  them  all  together, — even  then  his  record 
must  of  necessity  be  imperfect. 

But  to  how  much  has  man  really  access  ?  If 
you  will  look  at  this  map  you  will  see  that  it 
represents  the  proportion  of  the  sea  to  the  earth  : 
this  coloured  part  indicates  all  the  dry  land,  and 
this  other  portion  is  the  water.  You  will  notice 
at  once  that  the  water  covers  three-fifths  of  the 
whole  surface  of  the  globe,  and  has  covered  it  in 
the  same  manner  ever  since  man  has  kept  any 
record  of  his  own  observations,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  minute  period  during  which  he  has  cultivated 
geological  inquiry.  So  that  three-fifths  of  the 
surface  of  the  earth  is  shut  out  from  us  because 
it  is  under  the  sea.  Let  us  look  at  the  other 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC   NATURE          341 

two-fifths,  and  see  what  are  the  countries  in 
which  anything  that  may  he  termed  searching 
geological  inquiry  has  been  carried  out :  a  good 
deal  of  France,  Germany,  and  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,  bits  of  Spain,  of  Italy,  and  of  Russia,  have 
been  examined,  but  of  the  whole  great  mass  of 
Africa,  except  parts  of  the  southern  extremity, 
we  know  next  to  nothing ;  little  bits  of  India,  but 
of  the  greater  part  of  the  Asiatic  continent 
nothing ;  bits  of  the  Northern  American  States 
and  of  Canada,  but  of  the  greater  part  of  the 
continent  of  North  America,  and  in  still  larger 
proportion,  of  South  America,  nothing  ! 

Under  these  circumstances,  it  follows  that  even 
with  reference  to  that  kind  of  imperfect  informa- 
tion which  we  can  possess,  it  is  only  of  about  the 
ten-thousandth  part  of  the  accessible  parts  of  the 
earth  that  has  been  examined  properly.  There- 
fore, it  is  with  justice  that  the  most  thoughtful  of 
those  who  are  concerned  in  these  inquiries  insist 
continually  upon  the  imperfection  of  the  geological 
record  ;  for,  I  repeat,  it  is  absolutely  necessary, 
from  the  nature  of  things,  that  that  record  should 
be  of  the  most  fragmentary  and  imperfect 
character.  Unfortunately  this  circumstance  has 
been  constantly  forgotten.  Men  of  science,  like 
young  colts  in  a  fresh  pasture,  are  apt  to  be 
exhilarated  on  being  turned  into  a  new  field  of 
inquiry,  to  go  off  at  a  hand-gallop,  in  total 
disregard  of  hedges  and  ditches,  to  lose  sight  of 


342  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

the  real  limitation  of  their  inquiries,  and  to 
forget  the  extreme  imperfection  of  what  is  really 
known.  Geologists  have  imagined  that  they  could 
tell  us  what  was  going  on  at  all  parts  of  the 
earth's  surface  during  a  given  epoch  ;  they  have 
talked  of  this  deposit  being  contemporaneous  with 
that  deposit,  until,  from  our  little  local  histories  of 
the  changes  at  limited  spots  of  the  earth's  surface, 
they  have  constructed  a  universal  history  of  the 
globe  as  full  of  wonders  and  portents  as  any  other 
story  of  antiquity. 

But  what  does  this  attempt  to  construct  a 
universal  history  of  the  globe  imply  ?  It  implies 
that  we  shall  not  only  have  a  precise  knowledge  of 
the  events  which  have  occurred  at  any  particular 
point,  but  that  we  shall  be  able  to  say  what  events, 
at  any  one  spot,  took  place  at  the  same  time  with 
those  at  other  spots. 

Let  us  see  how  far  that  is  in  the  nature  of 
things  practicable.  Suppose  that  here  I  make 
a  section  of  the  Lake  of  Killarney,  and  here  the 
section  of  another  lake — that  of  Loch  Lomond 
in  Scotland  for  instance.  The  rivers  that  flow 
into  them  are  constantly  carrying  down  deposits 
of  mud,  and  beds,  or  strata,  are  being  as  constantly 
formed,  one  above  the  other,  at  the  bottom  of 
those  lakes.  Now,  there  is  not  a  shadow  of  doubt 
that  in  these  two  lakes  the  lower  beds  are  all 
older  than  the  upper — there  is  no  doubt  about 
that ;  but  what  does  this  tell  us  about  the  age  of 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    343 

any  given  bed  in  Loch  Lomond,  as  compared  with 
that  of  any  given  bed  in  the  Lake  of  Killarney  ? 
It  is,  indeed,  obvious  that  if  any  two  sets  of 
deposits  are  separated  and  discontinuous,  there  is 
absolutely  no  means  whatever  given  you  by  the 
nature  of  the  deposit  of  saying  whether  one  is 
much  younger  or  older  than  the  other ;  but  you 
may  say,  as  many  have  said  and  think,  that  the 
case  is  very  much  altered  if  the  beds  which  we 
are  comparing  are  continuous.  Suppose  two  beds 


Fig.s. 

of  mud  hardened  into  rock, — A  and  B — are  seen 
in  section.     (Fig.  5.) 

Well,  you  say,  it  is  admitted  that  the  lower- 
most bed  is  always  the  older.  Very  well ;  B, 
therefore,  is  older  than  A.  No  doubt,  as  a  whole, 
it  is  so ;  or  if  any  parts  of  the  two  beds  which  are 
in  the  same  vertical  line  are  compared,  it  is  so. 
But  suppose  you  take  what  seems  a  very  natural 
step  further,  and  say  that  the  part  a  of  the  bed  A 
is  younger  than  the  part  b  of  the  bed  B.  Is  this 
sound  reasoning  ?  If  you  find  any  record  of 
changes  taking  place  at  b,  did  they  occur  before 

51 


344  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

any  events  which  took  place  while  a  was  being 
deposited  ?  It  looks  all  very  plain  sailing,  indeed, 
to  say  that  they  did  ;  and  yet  there  is  no  proof  of 
anything  of  the  kind.  As  the  former  Director  of 
this  Institution,  Sir  H.  De  la  Beche,  long  ago 
showed,  this  reasoning  may  involve  an  entire 
fallacy.  It  is  extremely  possible  that  a  may  have 
been  deposited  ages  before  b.  It  is  very  easy  to 
understand  how  that  can  be.  To  return  to  Fig. 
4 ;  when  A  and  B  were  deposited,  they  were 
substantially  contemporaneous ;  A  being  simply 
the  finer  deposit,  and  B  the  coarser  of  the  same 
detritus  or  waste  of  land.  Now  suppose  that 
that  sea-bottom  goes  down  (as  shown  in  Fig.  4), 
so  that  the  first  deposit  is  carried  no  farther  than 
a,  forming  the  bed  A1,  and  the  coarse  no  farther 
than  b,  forming  the  bed  B1,  the  result  will  be  the 
formation  of  two  continuous  beds,  one  of  fine 
sediment  (A  A1)  over-lapping  another  of  coarse 
sediment  (B  B1).  Now  suppose  the  whole  sea- 
bottom  is  raised  up,  and  a  section  exposed  about 
the  point  A1 ;  no  doubt,  at  this  spot,  the  upper 
bed  is  younger  than  the  lower.  But  we  should 
obviously  greatly  err  if  we  concluded  that  the 
mass  of  the  upper  bed  at  A  was  younger  than  the 
lower  bed  at  B  ;  for  we  have  just  seen  that  they 
are  contemporaneous  deposits.  Still  more  should 
we  be  in  error  if  we  supposed  the  upper  bed  at  A 
to  be  younger  than  the  continuation  of  the  lower 
bed  at  B x ;  for  A  was  deposited  long  before  B  \ 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          345 

In  fine,  if,  instead  of  comparing  immediately 
adjacent  parts  o£  two  beds,  one  of  which  lies  upon 
another,  we  compare  distant  parts,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  the  upper  may  be  any  number  of 
years  older  than  the  under,  and  the  under  any 
number  of  years  younger  than  the  upper. 

Now  you  must  not  suppose  that  I  put  this 
before  you  for  the  purpose  of  raising  a  paradoxical 
difficulty;  the  fact  is,  that  the  great  mass  of 
deposits  have  taken  place  in  sea-bottoms  which 
are  gradually  sinking,  and  have  been  formed 
under  the  very  conditions  I  am  here  supposing. 

Do  not  run  away  with  the  notion  that  this 
subverts  the  principle  I  laid  down  at  first.  The 
error  lies  in  extending  a  principle  which  is  per- 
fectly applicable  to  deposits  in  the  same  vertical 
line  to  deposits  which  are  not  in  that  relation  to 
one  another. 

It  is  in  consequence  of  circumstances  of  this 
kind,  and  of  others  that  I  might  mention  to  you, 
that  our  conclusions  on  and  interpretations  of  the 
record  are  really  and  strictly  only  valid  so  long  as 
we  confine  ourselves  to  one  vertical  section.  I  do 
not  mean  to  tell  you  that  there  are  no  qualifying 
circumstances,  so  that,  even  in  very  considerable 
areas,  we  may  safely  speak  of  conformably  super- 
imposed beds  being  older  or  younger  than  others 
at  many  different  points.  But  we  can  never  be 
quite  sure  in  coming  to  that  conclusion,  and 
especially  we  cannot  be  sure  if  there  is  any  break 


346  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

in  their  continuity,  or  any  very  great  distance 
between  the  points  to  be  compared. 

Well  now,  so  much  for  the  record  itself, — so 
much  for  its  imperfections, — so  much  for  the  con- 
ditions to  be  observed  in  interpreting  it,  and  its 
chronological  indications,  the  moment  we  pass 
beyond  the  limits  of  a  vertical  linear  section. 

Now  let  us  pass  from  the  record  to  that  which  it 
contains, — from  the  book  itself  to  the  writing  and 
the  figures  on  its  pages.  This  writing  and  these 
figures  consist  of  remains  of  animals  and  plants 
which,  in  the  great  majority  of  cases,  have  lived 
and  died  in  the  very  spot  in  which  we  now  find 
them,  or  at  least  in  the  immediate  vicinity.  You 
must  all  of  you  be  aware — and  I  referred  to  the 
fact  in  my  last  lecture — that  there  are  vast 
numbers  of  creatures  living  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea.  These  creatures,  like  all  others,  sooner  or 
later  die,  and  their  shells  and  hard  parts  lie  at 
the  bottom  ;  and  then  the  fine  mud  which  is 
being  constantly  brought  down  by  rivers  and  the 
action  of  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  sea,  covers 
them  over  and  protects  them  from  any  further 
change  or  alteration  ;  and,  of  course,  as  in  process 
of  time  the  mud  becomes  hardened  and  solidified, 
the  shells  of  these  animals  are  preserved  and 
firmly  imbedded  in  the  limestone  or  sandstone 
which  is  being  thus  formed.  You  may  see  in  the 
galleries  of  the  Museum  up  stairs  specimens  of 
limestones  in  which  such  fossil  remains  of  existing 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE         347 

animals  are  imbedded.  There  are  some  specimens 
in  which  turtles'  eggs  have  been  imbedded  in 
calcareous  sand,  and  before  the  sun  had  hatched 
the  young  turtles,  they  became  covered  over  with 
calcareous  mud,  and  thus  have  been  preserved 
and  fossilised. 

Not  only  does  this  process  of  imbedding  and 
fossilisation  occur  with  marine  and  other  aquatic 
animals  and  plants,  but  it  affects  those  land 
animals  and  plants  which  are  drifted  away  to  sea, 
or  become  buried  in  bogs  or  morasses;  and  the 
animals  which  have  been  trodden  down  by  their 
fellows  and  crushed  in  the  mud  at  the  river's 
bank,  as  the  herd  have  come  to  drink.  In  any  of 
these  cases,  the  organisms  may  be  crushed  or  be 
mutilated,  before  or  after  putrefaction,  in  such  a 
manner  that  perhaps  only  a  part  will  be  left  in 
the  form  in  which  it  reaches  us.  It  is,  indeed,  a 
most  remarkable  fact,  that  it  is  quite  an  exceptional 
case  to  find  a  skeleton  of  any  one  of  all  the 
thousands  of  wild  land  animals  that  we  know  are 
constantly  being  killed,  or  dying  in  the  course  of 
nature :  they  are  preyed  on  and  devoured  by 
other  animals,  or  die  in  places  where  their  bodies 
are  not  afterwards  protected  by  mud.  There  are 
other  animals  existing  on  the  sea,  the  shells  of 
which  form  exceedingly  large  deposits.  You  are 
probably  aware  that  before  the  attempt  was  made 
to  lay  the  Atlantic  telegraphic  cable,  the  Govern- 
ment employed  vessels  in  making  a  series  of  very 


348  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

careful  observations  and  soundings  of  the  bottom 
of  the  Atlantic;  and  although,  as  we  must  all 
regret,  that  up  to  the  present  time  that  project  has 
not  succeeded,  we  have  the  satisfaction  of  knowing 
that  it  yielded  some  most  remarkable  results  to 
science.  The  Atlantic  Ocean  had  to  be  sounded 
right  across,  to  depths  of  several  miles  in  some 
places,  and  the  nature  of  its  bottom  was  carefully 
ascertained.  Well,  now,  a  space  of  about  1,000 
miles  wide  from  east  to  west,  and  I  do  not  exactly 
know  how  many  from  north  to  south,  but  at  any 
rate  600  or  700  miles,  was  carefully  examined,  and 
it  was  found  that  over  the  whole  of  that  immense 
area  an  excessively  fine  chalky  mud  is  being 
deposited ;  and  this  deposit  is  entirely  made  up  of 
animals  whose  hard  parts  are  deposited  in  this 
part  of  the  ocean,  and  are  doubtless  gradually 
acquiring  solidity  and  becoming  metamorphosed 
into  a  chalky  limestone.  Thus,  you  see,  it  is  quite 
possible  in  this  way  to  preserve  unmistakable 
records  of  animal  and  vegetable  life.  Whenever 
the  sea-bottom,  by  some  of  those  undulations  of 
the  earth's  crust  that  I  have  referred  to,  becomes 
up-heaved,  and  sections  or  borings  are  made,  or 
pits  are  dug,  then  we  become  able  to  examine 
the  contents  and  constituents  of  these  ancient  sea- 
bottoms,  and  find  out  what  manner  of  animals 
lived  at  that  period. 

Now  it  is  a  very  important  consideration  in  its 
bearing    on  the   completeness  of  the  record,  to 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE          349 

inquire  how  far  the  remains  contained  in  these 
fossiliferous  limestones  are  able  to  convey  any- 
thing like  an  accurate  or  complete  account  of  the 
animals  which  were  in  existence  at  the  time  of  its 
formation.  Upon  that  point  we  can  form  a  very 
clear  judgment,  and  one  in  which  there  is  no 
possible  room  for  any  mistake.  There  are  of 
course  a  great  number  of  animals — such  as  jelly- 
fishes,  and  other  animals — without  any  hard  parts, 
of  which  we  cannot  reasonably  expect  to  find  any 
traces  whatever :  there  is  nothing  of  them  to  pre- 
serve. Within  a  very  short  time,  you  will  have 
noticed,  after  they  are  removed  from  the  water, 
they  dry  up  to  a  mere  nothing  ;  certainly  they 
are  not  of  a  nature  to  leave  any  very  visible  traces 
of  their  existence  on  such  bodies  as  chalk  or  mud. 
Then  again,  look  at  land  animals  ;  it  is,  as  I  have 
said,  a  very  uncommon  thing  to  find  a  land  animal 
entire  after  death.  Insects  and  other  carnivorous 
animals  very  speedily  pull  them  to  pieces,  putre- 
faction takes  place,  and  so,  out  of  the  hundreds  of 
thousands  that  are  known  to  die  every  year,  it  is 
the  rarest  thing  in  the  world  to  see  one  imbedded 
in  such  a  way  that  its  remains  would  be  preserved 
for  a  lengthened  period.  Not  only  is  this  the 
case,  but  even  when  animal  remains  have  been 
safely  imbedded,  certain  natural  agents  may  wholly 
destroy  and  remove  them. 

Almost  all   the   hard    parts    of    animals — the 
bones  and  so  on — are  composed  chiefly  of  phosphate 


350  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

of  lime  and  carbonate  of  lime.  Some  years  ago, 
I  had  to  make  an  inquiry  into  the  nature  of  some 
very  curious  fossils  sent  to  me  from  the  North  of 
Scotland.  Fossils  are  usually  hard  bony  structures 
that  have  become  imbedded  in  the  way  I  have  de- 
scribed, and  have  gradually  acquired  the  nature  and 
solidity  of  the  body  with  which  they  are  associated  ; 
but  in  this  case  I  had  a  series  of  holes  in  some 
pieces  of  rock,  and  nothing  else.  Those  holes, 
however,  had  a  certain  definite  shape  about  them, 
and  when  I  got  a  skilful  workman  to  make  castings 
of  the  interior  of  these  holes,  I  found  that  they 
were  the  impressions  of  the  joints  of  a  backbone 
and  of  the  armour  of  a  great  reptile,  twelve  or  more 
feet  long.  This  great  beast  had  died  and  got 
buried  in  the  sand  ;  the  sand  had  gradually 
hardened  over  the  bones,  but  remained  porous. 
Water  had  trickled  through  it,  and  that  water 
being  probably  charged  with  a  superfluity  of 
carbonic  acid,  had  dissolved  all  the  phosphate  and 
carbonate  of  lime,  and  the  bones  themselves  had 
thus  decayed  and  entirely  disappeared  ;  but  as 
the  sandstone  happened  to  have  consolidated  by 
that  time,  the  precise  shape  of  the  bones  was 
retained.  If  that  sandstone  had  remained  soft  a 
little  longer,  we  should  have  known  nothing  what- 
soever of  the  existence  of  the  reptile  whose  bones 
it  had  encased. 

How  certain  it  is  that  a  vast  number  of  animals 
which  have  existed  at  one  period  on  this  earth 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC   NATURE          351 

have  entirely  perished,  and  left  no  trace  whatever 
of  their  forms,  may  be  proved  to  you  by  other 
considerations.  There  are  large  tracts  of  sand- 
stone in  various  parts  of  the  world,  in  which 
nobody  has  yet  found  anything  but  footsteps. 
Not  a  bone  of  any  description,  but  an  enormous 
number  of  traces  of  footsteps.  There  is  no 
question  about  them.  There  is  a  whole  valley  in 
Connecticut  covered  with  these  footsteps,  and  not 
a  single  fragment  of  the  animals  which  made 
them  have  yet  been  found.  Let  me  mention 
another  case  while  upon  that  matter,  which  is 
even  more  surprising  than  those  to  which  I  have 
yet  referred.  There  is  a  limestone  formation  near 
Oxford,  at  a  place  called  Stonesfield,  which  has 
yielded  the  remains  of  certain  very  interesting 
mammalian  animals,  and  up  to  this  time,  if  I 
recollect  rightly,  there  have  been  found  seven 
specimens  of  its  lower  jaws,  and  not  a  bit  of  any- 
thing else,  neither  limb-bones  nor  skull,  nor  any 
part  whatever;  not  a  fragment  of  the  whole 
system !  Of  course,  it  would  be  preposterous  to 
imagine  that  the  beasts  had  nothing  else  but  a 
lower  jaw  !  The  probability  is,  as  Dr.  Buckland 
showed,  as  the  result  of  his  observations  on  dead 
dogs  in  the  river  Thames,  that  the  lower  jaw,  not 
being  secured  by  very  firm  ligaments  to  the  bones 
of  the  head,  and  being  a  weighty  affair,  would 
easily  be  knocked  off,  or  might  drop  away  from 
the  body  as  it  floated  in  water  in  a  state  of  de- 


352  THE  CAUSES  OF   THE  xi 

composition.  The  jaw  would  thus  be  deposited 
immediately,  while  the  rest  of  the  body  would 
float  and  drift  away  altogether,  ultimately  reaching 
the  sea,  and  perhaps  becoming  destroyed.  The 
jaw  becomes  covered  up  and  preserved  in  the  river 
silt,  and  thus  it  comes  that  we  have  such  a 
curious  circumstance  as  that  of  the  lower  jaws  in 
the  Stonesfield  slates.  So  that,  you  see,  faulty  as 
these  layers  of  stone  in  the  earth's  crust  are, 
defective  as  they  necessarily  are  as  a  record,  the 
account  of  contemporaneous  vital  phenomena 
presented  by  them  is,  by  the  necessity  of  the  case, 
infinitely  more  defective  and  fragmentary. 

It  was  necessary  that  I  should  put  all  this  very 
strongly  before  you,  because,  othenvise,  you  might 
have  been  led  to  think  differently  of  the  com- 
pleteness of  our  knowledge  by  the  next  facts  I 
shall  state  to  you. 

The  researches  of  the  last  three-quarters  of  a 
century  have,  in  truth,  revealed  a  wonderful 
richness  of  organic  life  in  those  rocks.  Certainly 
not  fewer  than  thirty  or  forty  thousand  different 
species  of  fossils  have  been  discovered.  You  have 
no  more  ground  for  doubting  that  these  creatures 
really  lived  and  died  at  or  near  the  places  in 
which  we  find  them  than  you  have  for  like 
scepticism  about  a  shell  on  the  sea-shore.  The 
evidence  is  as  good  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other. 

Our  next  business  is  to  look  at  the  general 
character  of  these  fossil  remains,  and  it  is  a  subject 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    353 

which  will  be  requisite  to  consider  carefully ;  and 
the  first  point  for  us  is  to  examine  how  much  the 
extinct  Flora  and  Fauna  as  a  whole — disregarding 
altogether  the  succession  of  their  constituents,  of 
which  I  shall  speak  afterwards — differ  from  the 
Flora  and  Fauna  of  the  present  day  ; — how  far  they 
differ  in  what  we  do  know  about  them,  leaving 
altogether  out  of  consideration  speculations  based 
upon  what  we  do  not  know. 

I  strongly  imagine  that  if  it  were  not  for  the 
peculiar  appearance  that  fossilised  animals  have, 
any  of  you  might  readily  walk  through  a 
museum  which  contains  fossil  remains  mixed  up 
with  those  of  the  present  forms  of  life,  and  I  doubt 
very  much  whether  your  uninstructed  eyes  would 
lead  you  to  see  any  vast  or  wonderful  difference 
between  the  two.  If  you  looked  closely,  you  would 
notice,  in  the  first  place,  a  great  many  things  very 
like  animals  with  which  you  are  acquainted  now  : 
you  would  see  differences  of  shape  and  proportion, 
but  on  the  whole  a  close  similarity. 

I  explained  what  I  meant  by  ORDERS  the  other 
day,  when  I  described  the  animal  kingdom  as 
being  divided  into  sub-kingdoms,  classes  and 
orders.  If  you  divide  the  animal  kingdom  into 
orders  you  will  find  that  there  are  above  one 
hundred  and  twenty.  The  number  may  vary  on 
one  side  or  the  other,  but  this  is  a  fair  estimate. 
That  is  the  sum  total  of  the  orders  of  all  the 
animals  which  we  know  now,  and  which  have 


354  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

been    known  in    past  times,   and    left   remains 
behind. 

Now,  how  many  of  those  are  absolutely  extinct  ? 
That  is  to  say,  how  many  of  these  orders  of  animals 
have  lived  at  a  former  period  of  the  world's  history 
but  have  at  present  no  representatives  ?  That  is 
the  sense  in  which  I  meant  to  use  the  word 
"  extinct."  I  mean  that  those  animals  did  live 
on  this  earth  at  one  time,  but  have  left  no  one 
of  their  kind  with  us  at  the  present  moment. 
So  that  estimating  the  number  of  extinct  animals 

>-  -*s  a  sor*  °^  way  °^  comParing  the  Past  creation  as 
.     .  •f-tf     a  whole  with  the  present  as  a  whole.     Among  the 
mammalia  and  birds  there  are  none  extinct ;  but 
-^vv  when  we  come  to  the  reptiles  there  is  a  most 

wonderful  thing :  out  of  the  eight  orders,  or 
thereabouts,  which  you  can  make  among  reptiles, 
one-half  are  extinct.  These  diagrams  of  the 
/  plesiosaurus,  the'  ichthyosaurus,  th^  pterodactyle, 
give  you  a  notion  of  some  of  these  extinct  reptiles. 
And  here  is  a  cast  of  the  pterodactyle  and  bones 
of  the  ichthyosaurus  and  the  plesiosaurus,  just  as 
fresh-looking  as  if  it  had  been  recently  dug  up  in  a 
churchyard.  Thus,  in  the  reptile  class,  there  are 
no  less  than  half  of  the  orders  which  are  absolutely 
extinct.  If  we  turn  to  the  Amphibia,  there  was 
one  extinct  order,  the  Labyrinthodonts,  typified 
by  the  large  salamander-like  beast  shown  in  this 
diagram. 

No  order  of  fishes  is   known   to    be   extinct. 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    355 

Every  fish  that  we  find  in  the  strata — to  which  I 
have  been  referring — can  be  identified  and  placed 
in  one  of  the  orders  which  exist  at  the  present  day. 
There  is  not  known  to  be  a  single  ordinal  form 
of  insect  extinct.  There  are  only  two  orders 
extinct  among  the  Crustacea.  There  is  not  known 
to  be  an  extinct  order  of  these  creatures,  the 
parasitic  and  other  worms  ;  but  there  are  two,  not 
to  say  three,  absolutely  extinct  orders  of  this 
class,  the  Echinodermata  ;  out  of  all  the  orders  of 
the  Calenterata  and  Protozoa  only  one,  the  Rugose 
Corals. 

So  that,  you  see,  out  of  somewhere  about  120 
orders  of  animals,  taking  them  altogether,  you 
will  not,  at  the  outside  estimate,  find  above  ten 
or  a  dozen  extinct.  Summing  up  all  the  order  of 
animals  which  have  left  remains  behind  them, 
you  will  not  find  above  ten  or  a  dozen  which 
cannot  be  arranged  with  those  of  the  present  day ; 
that  is  to  say,  that  the  difference  does  not  amount 
to  much  more  than  ten  per  cent. :  and  the 
proportion  of  extinct  orders  of  plants  is  still 
smaller.  I  think  that  that  is  a  very  astounding 
a  most  astonishing  fact :  seeing  the  enormous 
epochs  of  time  which  have  elapsed  during  the 
constitution  of  the  surface  of  the  earth  as  it  at 
present  exists,  it  is,  indeed,  a  most  astounding 
thing  that  the  proportion  of  extinct  ordinal  types 
should  be  so  exceedingly  small. 

But  now,  there  is  another  point  of  view  in  which 


356  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

we  must  look  at  this  past  creation.  Suppose  that 
we  were  to  sink  a  vertical  pit  through  the  floor 
beneath  us,  and  that  I  could  succeed  in  making 
a  section  right  through  in  the  direction  of  New 
Zealand,  I  should  find  in  each  of  the  different 
beds  through  which  I  passed  the  remains  of 
animals  which  I  should  find  in  that  stratum  and 
not  in  the  others.  First,  I  should  come  upon 
beds  of  gravel  or  drift  containing  the  bones  of 
large  animals,  such  as  the  elephant,  rhinoceros, 
and  cave  tiger.  Rather  curious  things  to  fall 
across  in  Piccadilly  !  If  I  should  dig  lower  still, 
I  should  come  upon  a  bed  of  what  we  call  the 
London  clay,  and  in  this,  as  you  will  see  in 
our  galleries  up  stairs,  are  found  remains  of 
strange  cattle,  remains  of  turtles,  palms,  and  large 
tropical  fruits ;  with  shell-fish  such  as  you  see  the 
like  of  now  only  in  tropical  regions.  If  I  went 
below  that,  I  should  come  upon  the  chalk,  and 
there  I  should  find  something  altogether  different, 
the  remains  of  ichthyosauria  and  pterodactyles, 
and  ammonites,  and  so  forth. 

I  do  not  know  what  Mr.  Godwin  Austin  would 
say  comes  next,  but  probably  rocks  containing 
more  ammonites,  and  more  ichthyosauria  and 
plesiosauria,  with  a  vast  number  of  other  things ; 
and  under  that  I  should  meet  with  yet  older 
rocks  containing  numbers  of  strange  shells  and 
fishes  ;  and  in  thus  passing  from  the  surface  to  the 
lowest  depths  of  the  earth's  crust,  the  forms  of 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE        357 

animal  ]ife  and  vegetable  life  which  I  should  meet 
with  in  the  successive  beds  would,  looking  at  them 
broadly,  be  the  more  different  the  further  that  I 
went  down.  Or,  in  other  words,  inasmuch  as  we 
started  with  the  clear  principle,  that  in  a  series  of 
naturally-disposed  mud  beds  the  lowest  are  the 
oldest,  we  should  come  to  this  result,  that  the 
further  we  go  back  in  time  the  more  difference 
exists  between  the  animal  and  vegetable  life  of 
an  epoch  and  that  which  now  exists.  That  was 
the  conclusion  to  which  I  wished  to  bring  you  at 
the  end  of  this  lecture. 


Ill 


THE  METHOD  BY  WHICH  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE 
PRESENT  AND  PAST  CONDITIONS  OF  ORGANIC 
NATURE  ARE  TO  BE  DISCOVERED. — THE 
ORIGINATION  OF  LIVING  BEINGS. 

IN  the  two  preceding  lectures  I  have  endeavoured 
to  indicate  to  you  the  extent  of  the  subject-matter 
of  the  inquiry  upon  which  we  are  engaged ;  and 
having  thus  acquired  some  conception  of  the  past 
and  present  phenomena  of  organic  nature,  I  must 
now  turn  to  that  which  constitutes  the  great  prob- 
lem which  we  have  set  before  ourselves ; — I  mean, 
the  question  of  what  knowledge  we  have  of  the 
causes  of  these  phenomena  of  organic  nature,  and 
how  such  knowledge  is  obtainable. 

Here,  on  the  threshold  of  the  inquiry,  an 
objection  meets  us.  There  are  in  the  world  a 
number  of  extremely  worthy,  well-meaning 
persons,  whose  judgments  and  opinions  are 
entitled  to  the  utmost  respect  on  account  of 
their  sincerity,  who  are  of  opinion  that  vital 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          359 

phenomena,  and  especially  all  questions  relating 
to  the  origin  of  vital  phenomena,  are  questions 
quite  apart  from  the  ordinary  run  of  inquiry,  and 
are,  by  their  very  nature,  placed  out  of  our  reach. 
They  say  that  all  these  phenomena  originated 
miraculously,  or  in  some  way  totally  different  from 
the  ordinary  course  of  nature,  and  that  therefore 
they  conceive  it  to  ba  futile,  not  to  say  pre- 
sumptuous, to  attempt  to  inquire  into  them. 

To  such  sincere  and  earnest  persons,  I  would 
only  say,  that  a  question  of  this  kind  is  not  to  be 
shelved  upon  theoretical  or  speculative  grounds. 
You  may  remember  the  story  of  the  Sophist  who 
demonstrated  to  Diogenes  in  the  most  complete 
and  satisfactory  manner  that  he  could  not  walk  ; 
that,  in  fact,  all  motion  was  an  impossibility ;  and 
that  Diogenes  refuted  him  by  simply  getting  up 
and  walking  round  his  tub.  So,  in  the  same  way, 
the  man  of  science  replies  to  objections  of  this 
kind,  by  simply  getting  up  and  walking  onward, 
and  showing  what  science  has  done  and  is  doing 
— by  pointing  to  that  immense  mass  of  facts 
which  have  been  ascertained  as  systematised 
under  the  forms  of  the  great  doctrines  of  morpho- 
l°»v>  °f  development,  of  distribution,  and  the 
like.  He  sees  an  enormous  mass  of  facts  and  laws 
relating  to  organic  beings,  which  stand  on  the 
same  good  sound  foundation  as  every  other  natural 
law.  With  this  mass  of  facts  and  laws  before  us, 
therefore,  seeing  that,  as  far  as  organic  matters 

62 


3GO  THE  CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

have  hitherto  been  accessible  and  studied,  they 
have  shown  themselves  capable  of  yielding  to 
scientific  investigation,  we  may  accept  this  as 
proof  that  order  and  law  reign  there  as  well  as 
in  the  rest  of  Nature.  The  man  of  science  says 
nothing  to  objectors  of  this  sort,  but  supposes 
that  we  can  and  shall  walk  to  a  knowledge  of  the 
origin  of  organic  nature,  in  the  same  Avay  that  we 
have  walked  to  a  knowledge  of  the  laws  and 
principles  of  the  inorganic  world. 

But  there  are  objectors  who  say  the  same  from 
ignorance  and  ill-will.  To  such  I  would  reply 
that  the  objection  comes  ill  from  them,  and  that 
the  real  presumption,  I  may  almost  say  the  real 
blasphemy,  in  this  matter,  is  in  the  attempt  to 
limit  that  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  phenomena, 
which  is  the  source  of  all  human  blessings,  and 
from  which  has  sprung  all  human  prosperity  and 
progress ;  for,  after  all,  we  can  accomplish  com- 
paratively little  ;  the  limited  range  of  our  own 
faculties  bounds  us  on  every  side, — the  field  of 
our  powers  of  observation  is  small  enough,  and 
he  who  endeavours  to  narrow  the  sphere  of  our 
inquiries  is  only  pursuing  a  course  that  is  likely 
to  produce  the  greatest  harm  to  his  fellow- 
men. 

But  now,  assuming,  as  we  all  do,  I  hope,  that 
these  phenomena  are  properly  accessible  to  inquiry ; 
and  setting  out  upon  our  search  into  the  causes 
of  the  phenomena  of  organic  nature,  or  at  any 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          361 

rate,  setting  out  to  discover  how  much  we  at 
present  know  upon  these  abstruse  matters,  the 
question  arises  as  to  what  is  to  be  our  course  of 
proceeding,  and  what  method  we  must  lay  down 
for  our  guidance.  I  reply  to  that  question,  that 
our  method  must  be  exactly  the  same  as  that  which 
is  pursued  in  any  other  scientific  inquiry,  the 
method  of  scientific  investigation  being  the  same 
for  all  orders  of  facts  and  phenomena  whatsoever. 

I  must  dwell  a  little  on  this  point,  for  I  wish  you 
to  leave  this  room  with  a  very  clear  conviction  that 
scientific  investigation  is  not,  as  many  people  seem 
to  suppose,  some  kind  of  modern  black  art.  I  say 
that  you  might  easily  gather  this  impression  from 
the  manner  in  which  many  persons  speak  of 
scientific  inquiry,  or  talk  about  inductive  and 
deductive  philosophy,  or  the  principles  of  the 
"  Baconian  philosophy."  I  do  protest  that,  of  the 
vast  number  of  cants  in  this  world,  there  are 
none,  to  my  mind,  so  contemptible  as  the  pseudo- 
scientific  cant  which  is  talked  about  the  "  Baconian 
philosophy." 

To  hear  people  talk  about  the  great  Chancellor 
— and  a  very  great  man  he  certainly  was, — you 
would  think  that  it  was  he  who  had  invented 
science,  and  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
sound  reasoning  before  the  time  of  Queen 
Elizabeth!  Of  course  you  say,  that  cannot 
possibly  be  true  ;  you  perceive,  on  a  moment's 
reflection,  that  such  an  idea  is  absurdly  wrong, 


362  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

and  yet,  so  firmly  rooted  is  this  sort  of  impression, 
— I  cannot  call  it  an  idea,  or  conception, — the 
thing  is  too  absurd  to  be  entertained, — but  so 
completely  does  it  exist  at  the  bottom  of  most 
men's  minds,  that  this  has  been  a  matter  of  ob- 
servation with  me  for  many  years  past.  There 
are  many  men  who,  though  knowing  absolutely 
nothing  of  the  subject  with  which  they  may  be 
dealing,  wish,  nevertheless,  to  damage  the  author 
of  some  view  with  which  they  think  fit  to  disagree. 
What  they  do,  then,  is  not  to  go  and  learn  some- 
thing about  the  subject,  which  one  would  naturally 
think  the  best  way  of  fairly  dealing  with  it ;  but 
they  abuse  the  originator  of  the  view  they  ques- 
tion, in  a  general  manner,  and  wind  up  by  saying 
that,  "After  all,  you  know,  the  principles  and 
method  of  this  author  are  totally  opposed  to  the- 
canons  of  the  Baconian  philosophy."  Then  every- 
body applauds,  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  agrees 
that  it  must  be  so.  But  if  you  were  to  stop  them 
all  in  the  middle  of  their  applause,  you  would 
probably  find  that  neither  the  speaker  nor  his 
applauders  could  tell  you  how  or  in  what  way  it 
was  so  ;  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  having  the 
slightest  idea  of  what  they  mean  when  they  speak 
of  the  "  Baconian  philosophy." 

You  will  understand,  I  hope,  that  I  have  not 
the  slightest  desire  to  join  in  the  outcry  against 
either  the  morals,  the  intellect,  or  the  great  genius 
of  Lord  Chancellor  Bacon.  He  was  undoubtedly 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    363 

a  very  great  man,  let  people  say  what  they  will  of 
him ;  but  notwithstanding  all  that  he  did  for 
philosophy,  it  would  be  entirely  wrong  to  suppose 
that  the  methods  of  modern  scientific  inquiry 
originated  with  him,  or  with  his  age ;  they  origin- 
ated with  the  first  man,  whoever  he  was ;  and 
indeed  existed  long  before  him,  for  many  of  the 
essential  processes  of  reasoning  are  exerted  by  the 
higher  order  of  brutes  as  completely  and  effectively 
as  by  ourselves.  We  see  in  many  of  the  brute 
creation  the  exercise  of  one,  at  least,  of  the  same 
powers  of  reasoning  as  that  which  we  ourselves 
employ. 

The  method  of  scientific  investigation  is  nothing 
but  the  expression  of  the  necessary  mode  of  work- 
ing of  the  human  mind.  It  is  simply  the  mode 
at  which  all  phenomena  are  reasoned  about,  ren- 
dered precise  and  exact.  There  is  no  more  differ- 
ence, but  there  is  just  the  same  kind  of  difference, 
between  the  mental  operations  of  a  man  of  science 
and  those  of  an  ordinary  person,  as  there  is  between 
the  operations  and  methods  of  a  baker  or  of  a 
butcher  weighing  out  his  goods  in  common  scales, 
and  the  operations  of  a  chemist  in  performing  a 
difficult  and  complex  analysis  by  means  of  his 
balance  and  finely-graduated  weights.  It  is  not 
that  the  action  of  the  scales  in  the  one  case,  and 
the  balance  in  the  other,  differ  in  the  principles  of 
their  construction  or  manner  of  working  ;  but  the 
beam  of  one  is  set  on  an  infinitely  finer  axis  than 


364  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

the  other,  and  of  course  turns  by  the  addition  of 
a  much  smaller  weight. 

You  will  understand  this  better,  perhaps,  if  I 
give  you  some  familiar  example.  You  have  all 
heard  it  repeated,  I  dare  say,  that  men  of  science 
work  by  means  of  induction  and  deduction,  and 
that  by  the  help  of  these  operations,  they,  in  a  sort 
of  sense,  wring  from  Nature  certain  other  things, 
which  are  called  natural  laws,  and  causes,  and 
that  out  of  these,  by  some  cunning  skill  of  their 
own,  they  build  up  hypotheses  and  theories. 
And  it  is  imagined  by  many,  that  the  operations 
of  the  common  mind  can  be  by  no  means  com- 
pared with  these  processes,  and  that  they  have  to 
be  acquired  by  a  sort  of  special  apprenticeship  to 
the  craft.  To  hear  all  these  large  words,  you 
would  think  that  the  mind  of  a  man  of  science 
must  be  constituted  differently  from  that  of  his 
fellow  men  ;  but  if  you  will  not  be  frightened  by 
terms,  you  will  discover  that  you  are  quite  wrong, 
and  that  all  these  terrible  apparatus  are  being 
used  by  yourselves  every  day  and  every  hour  of 
your  lives. 

There  is  a  well-known  incident  in  one  of 
Moliere's  plays,  where  the  author  makes  the  hero 
express  unbounded  delight  on  being  told  that  he 
had  been  talking  prose  during  the  whole  of  his 
life.  In  the  same  way,  I  trust,  that  you  will  take 
comfort,  and  be  delighted  with  yourselves,  on  the 
discovery  that  you  have  been  acting  on  the  prin- 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC  NATURE          365 

ciples  of  inductive  and  deductive  philosophy  dur- 
ing the  same  period.  Probably  there  is  not  one 
here  who  has  not  in  the  course  of  the  day  had 
occasion  to  set  in  motion  a  complex  train  of  reason- 
ing, of  the  very  same  kind,  though  differing  of 
course  in  degree,  as  that  which  a  scientific  man 
goes  through  in  tracing  the  causes  of  natural 
phenomena. 

A  very  trivial  circumstance  will  serve  to  ex- 
emplify this.  Suppose  you  go  into  a  fruiterer's 
shop,  wanting  an  apple, — you  take  up  one,  and, 
on  biting  it,  you  find  it  is  sour;  you  look  at  it, 
and  see  that  it  is  hard  and  green.  You  take 
up  another  one,  and  that  too  is  hard,  green, 
and  sour.  The  shopman  offers  you  a  third  ; 
but,  before  biting  it,  you  examine  it,  and  find 
that  it  is  hard  and  green,  and  you  immediately 
say  that  you  will  not  have  it,  as  it  must 
be  sour,  like  those  that  you  have  already 
tried. 

Nothing  can  be  more  simple  than  that,  you 
think  ;  but  if  you  will  take  the  trouble  to  analyse 
and  trace  out  into  its  logical  elements  what  has 
been  done  by  the  mind,  you  will  be  greatly  sur- 
prised. In  the  first  place,  you  have  performed 
the  operation  of  induction.  You  found  that,  in 
two  experiences,  hardness  and  greenness  in  apples 
went  together  with  sourness.  It  was  so  in  the 
first  case,  and  it  was  confirmed  by  the  second. 
True,  it  is  a  very  small  basis,  but  still  it  is  enough 


366  THE  CAtJSES  OF  THE  xi 

to  make  an  induction  from ;  you  generalise  the 
facts,  and  you  expect  to  find  sourness  in  apples 
where  you  get  hardness  and  greenness.  You  found 
upon  that  a  general  law,  that  all  hard  and  green 
apples  are  sour ;  and  that,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  a 
perfect  induction.  Well,  having  got  your  natural 
law  in  this  way,  when  you  are  offered  another 
apple  which  you  find  is  hard  and  green,  you  say, 
"  All  hard  and  green  apples  are  sour ;  this  apple 
is  hard  and  green,  therefore  this  apple  is  sour." 
That  train  of  reasoning  is  what  logicians  call  a 
syllogism,  and  has  all  its  various  parts  and  terms, 
— its  major  premiss,  its  minor  premiss,  and  its 
conclusion.  And,  by  the  help  of  further  reason- 
ing, which,  if  drawn  out,  would  have  to  be  exhibited 
in  two  or  three  other  syllogisms,  you  arrive  at  your 
final  determination,  "  I  will  not  have  that  apple." 
So  that,  you  see,  you  have,  in  the  first  place, 
established  a  law  by  induction,  and  upon  that  you 
have  founded  a  deduction,  and  reasoned  out  the 
special  conclusion  of  the  particular  case.  Well 
now,  suppose,  having  got  your  law,  that  at  some 
time  afterwards,  you  are  discussing  the  qualities 
of  apples  with  a  friend  :  you  will  say  to  him,  "  It  is 
a  very  curious  thing, — but  I  find  that  all  hard  and 
green  apples  are  sour  ! "  Your  friend  says  to  you, 
"  But  how  do  you  know  that  ?  "  You  at  once 
reply,  "  Oh,  because  I  have  tried  them  over  and 
over  again,  and  have  always  found  them  to  be  so." 
Well,  if  we  were  talking  science  instead  of  common 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          367 

sense,  we  should  call  that  an  experimental  verifica- 
tion. And,  if  still  opposed,  you  go  further,  and 
say,  "  I  have  heard  from  the  people  in  Somerset- 
shire and  Devonshire,  where  a  large  number  of 
apples  are  grown,  that  they  have  observed  the 
same  thing.  It  is  also  found  to  be  the  case  in 
Normandy,  and  in  North  America.  In  short,  I 
find  it  to  be  the  universal  experience  of  mankind 
wherever  attention  has  been  directed  to  the  sub- 
ject." Whereupon,  your  friend,  unless  he  is  a 
very  unreasonable  man,  agrees  with  you,  and  is 
convinced  that  you  are  quite  right  in  the  conclu- 
sion you  have  drawn.  He  believes,  although  per- 
haps he  does  not  know  he  believes  it,  that  the 
more  extensive  verifications  are, — that  the  more 
frequently  experiments  have  been  made,  and  re- 
sults of  the  same  kind  arrived  at, — that  the  more 
varied  the  conditions  under  which  the  same  results 
are  attained,  the  more  certain  is  the  ultimate  con- 
clusion, and  he  disputes  the  question  no  further. 
He  sees  that  the  experiment  has  been  tried  under 
all  sorts  of  conditions,  as  to  time,  place,  and  people, 
with  the  same  result ;  and  he  says  with  you, 
therefore,  that  the  law  you  have  laid  down  must 
be  a  good  one,  and  he  must  believe  it. 

In  science  we  do  the  same  thing ; — the  philo- 
sopher exercises  precisely  the  same  faculties, 
though  iu  a  much  more  delicate  manner.  In 
scientific  inquiry  it  becomes  a  matter  of  duty  to 
expose  a  supposed  law  to  every  possible  kind  of 


368  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

verification,  and  to  take  care,  moreover,  that  this 
is  done  intentionally,  and  not  left  to  a  mere  acci- 
dent, as  in  the  case  of  the  apples.  And  in  science, 
as  in  common  life,  our  confidence  in  a  law  is  in 
exact  proportion  to  the  absence  of  variation  in 
the  result  of  our  experimental  verifications.  For 
instance,  if  you  let  go  your  grasp  of  an  article 
you  may  have  in  your  hand,  it  will  immediately 
fall  to  the  ground.  That  is  a  very  common  veri- 
fication of  one  of  the  best  established  laws  of 
nature — that  of  gravitation.  The  method  by 
which  men  of  science  establish  the  existence  of 
that  law  is  exactly  the  same  as  that  by  which  we 
have  established  the  trivial  proposition  about  the 
sourness  of  hard  and  green  apples.  But  we  believe 
it  in  such  an  extensive,  thorough,  and  unhesitat- 
ing manner  because  the  universal  experience  of 
mankind  verifies  it,  and  we  can  verify  it  ourselves 
at  any  time  ;  and  that  is  the  strongest  possible 
foundation  on  which  any  natural  law  can  rest. 

So  much,  then,  by  way  of  proof  that  the  method 
of  establishing  laws  in  science  is  exactly  the  same 
as  that  pursued  in  common  life.  Let  us  now  turn 
to  another  matter  (though  really  it  is  but  another 
phase  of  the  same  question),  and  that  is,  the 
method  by  which,  from  the  relations  of  certain 
phenomena,  we  prove  that  some  stand  in  the  posi- 
tion of  causes  towards  the  others. 

I  want  to  put  the  case  clearly  before  you,  and  I 
will  therefore  show  you  what  I  mean  by  another 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          369 

familiar  example.  I  will  suppose  that  one  of  you, 
on  coming  down  in  the  morning  to  the  parlour  of 
your  house,  finds  that  a  tea-pot  and  some  spoons 
which  had  been  left  in  the  room  on  the  previous 
evening  are  gone, — the  window  is  open,  and  you 
observe  the  mark  of  a  dirty  hand  on  the  window- 
frame,  and  perhaps,  in  addition  to  that,  you  notice 
the  impress  of  a  hob-nailed  shoe  on  the  gravel 
outside.  All  these  phenomena  have  struck  your 
attention  instantly,  and  before  two  seconds  have 
passed  you  say,  "  Oh,  somebody  has  broken  open 
the  window,  entered  the  room,  and  run  off  with 
the  spoons  and  the  tea-pot ! "  That  speech  is  out 
of  your  mouth  in  a  moment.  And  you  will  prob- 
ably add,  "  I  know  there  has  ;  I  am  quite  sure  of 
it  !  "  You  mean  to  say  exactly  what  you  know ; 
but  in  reality  you  are  giving  expression  to  what 
is,  in  all  essential  particulars,  an  hypothesis. 
You  do  not  know  it  at  all ;  it  is  nothing  but  an 
hypothesis  rapidly  framed  in  your  own  mind.  And 
it  is  an  hypothesis  founded  on  a  long  train  of  in- 
ductions and  deductions. 

What  are  those  inductions  and  deductions,  and 
how  have  you  got  at  this  hypothesis  ?  You  have 
observed,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  window  is 
open ;  but  by  a  train  of  reasoning  involving  many 
inductions  and  deductions,  you  have  probably 
arrived  long  before  at  the  general  law — and  a 
very  good  one  it  is — that  windows  do  not  open  of 
themselves;  and  you  therefore  conclude  that 


370  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

something  has  opened  the  window.  A  second 
general  law  that  you  have  arrived  at  in  the  same 
way  is,  that  tea-pots  and  spoons  do  not  go  out  of 
a  window  spontaneously,  and  you  are  satisfied  that, 
as  they  are  not  now  where  you  left  them,  they 
have  been  removed.  In  the  third  place,  you  look 
at  the  marks  on  the  window-sill,  and  the  shoe- 
marks  outside,  and  you  say  that  in  all  previous 
experience  the  former  kind  of  mark  has  never 
been  produced  by  anything  else  but  the  hand  of  a 
human  being  ;  and  the  same  experience  shows  that 
no  other  animal  but  man  at  present  wears  shoes 
with  hob-nails  in  them  such  as  would  produce  the 
marks  in  the  gravel.  I  do  not  know,  even  if  we 
could  discover  any  of  those  "  missing  links  "  that 
are  talked  about,  that  they  would  help  us  to  any 
other  conclusion  !  At  any  rate  the  law  which 
states  our  present  experience  is  strong  enough  for 
my  present  purpose.  You  next  reach  the  con- 
clusion, that  as  these  kinds  of  marks  have  not  been 
left  by  any  other  animals  than  men,  or  are  liable 
to  be  formed  in  any  other  way  than  by  a  man's 
hand  and  shoe,  the  marks  in  question  have  been 
formed  by  a  man  in  that  way.  You  have,  further, 
a  general  law,  founded  on  observation  and  experi- 
ence, and  that,  too,  is,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  a  very 
universal  and  unimpeachable  one, — that  some  men 
are  thieves  ;  and  you  assume  at  once  from  all  these 
premisses — and  that  is  what  constitutes  your 
hypothesis — that  the  man  who  made  the  marks 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          371 

outside  and  on  the  window-sill,  opened  the  window, 
got  into  the  room,  and  stole  youi  tea-pot  and 
spoons.  You  have  now  arrived  at  a  vera  causa ; 
— you  have  assumed  a  cause  which,  it  is  plain,  is 
competent  to  produce  all  the  phenomena  you  have 
observed.  You  can  explain  all  these  phenomena 
only  by  the  hypothesis  of  a  thief.  But  that  is  a 
hypothetical  conclusion,  of  the  justice  of  which 
you  have  no  absolute  proof  at  all ;  it  is  only 
rendered  highly  probable  by  a  series  of  inductive 
and  deductive  reasonings. 

I  suppose  your  first  action,  assuming  that  you 
are  a  man  of  ordinary  common  sense,  and  that 
you  have  established  this  hypothesis  to  your  own 
satisfaction,  will  very  likely  be  to  go  off  for  the 
police,  and  set  them  on  the  track  of  the  burglar, 
with  the  view  to  the  recovery  of  your  property. 
But  just  as  you  are  starting  with  this  object,  some 
person  comes  in,  and  on  learning  what  you  are 
about,  says,  "  My  good  friend,  you  are  going  on  a 
great  deal  too  fast.  How  do  you  know  that  the 
man  who  really  made  the  marks  took  the  spoons  ? 
It  might  have  been  a  monkey  that  took  them,  and 
the  man  may  have  merely  looked  in  afterwards." 
You  would  probably  reply,  "  Well,  that  is  all  very 
well,  but  you  see  it  is  contrary  to  all  experience 
of  the  way  tea-pots  and  spoons  are  abstracted ;  so 
that,  at  any  rate,  your  hypothesis  is  less  probable 
than  mine."  While  you  are  talking  the  thing 
over  in  this  way,  another  friend  arrives,  one  of 


372  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

that  good  kind  of  people  that  I  was  talking  of  a 
little  while  ago.  And  he  might  say,  "  Oh,  my  dear 
sir,  you  are  certainly  going  on  a  great  deal  too 
fast.  You  are  most  presumptuous.  You  admit 
that  all  these  occurrences  took  place  when  you 
were  fast  asleep,  at  a  time  when  you  could  not 
possibly  have  known  anything  about  what  was 
taking  place.  How  do  you  know  that  the  laws  of 
Nature  are  not  suspended  during  the  night  ?  It 
may  be  that  there  has  been  some  kind  of  super- 
natural interference  in  this  case."  In  point  of 
fact,  he  declares  that  your  hypothesis  is  one  of 
which  you  cannot  at  all  demonstrate  the  truth, 
and  that  you  are  by  no  means  sure  that  the  laws 
of  Nature  are  the  same  when  you  are  asleep  as 
when  you  are  awake. 

Well,  now,  you  cannot  at  the  moment  answer 
that  kind  of  reasoning.  You  feel  that  your  worthy 
friend  has  you  somewhat  at  a  disadvantage.  You 
will  feel  perfectly  convinced  in  your  own  mind, 
however,  that  you  are  quite  right,  and  you  say  to 
him,  "  My  good  friend,  I  can  only  be  guided  by 
the  natural  probabilities  of  the  case,  and  if  you 
will  be  kind  enough  to  stand  aside  and  permit  me 
to  pass,  I  will  go  and  fetch  the  police."  Well,  we 
will  suppose  that  your  journey  is  successful,  and 
that  by  good  luck  you  meet  with  a  policeman ; 
that  eventually  the  burglar  is  found  with  your 
property  on  his  person,  and  the  marks  correspond 
to  his  hand  and  to  his  boots.  Probably  any  jury 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    373 

would  consider  those  facts  a  very  good  experimental 
verification  of  your  hypothesis,  touching  the  cause 
of  the  abnormal  phenomena  observed  in  your 
parlour,  and  would  act  accordingly. 

Now,  in  this  suppositions  case,  I  have  taken 
phenomena  of  a  very  common  kind,  in  order  that 
you  might  see  what  are  the  different  steps  in  an 
ordinary  process  of  reasoning,  if  you  will  only  take 
the  trouble  to  analyse  it  carefully.  All  the  opera- 
tions I  have  described,  you  will  see,  are  involved 
in  the  mind  of  any  man  of  sense  in  leading  him 
to  a  conclusion  as  to  the  course  he  should  take  in 
order  to  make  good  a  robbery  and  punish  the 
offender.  I  say  that  you  are  led,  in  that  case,  to 
your  conclusion  by  exactly  the  same  train  of 
reasoning  as  that  which  a  man  of  science  pursues 
when  he  is  endeavouring  to  discover  the  origin  and 
laws  of  the  most  occult  phenomena.  The  process 
is,  and  always  must  be,  the  same ;  and  precisely 
the  same  mode  of  reasoning  was  employed  by 
Newton  and  Laplace  in  their  endeavours  to  dis- 
cover and  cTefine  the  causes  of  the  movements  of 
the  heavenly  bodies,  as  you,  with  your  own  common 
sense,  would  employ  to  detect  a  burglar.  The 
only  difference  is,  that  the  nature  of  the  inquiry 
being  more  abstruse,  every  step  has  to  be  most 
carefully  watched,  so  that  there  may  not  be  a 
single  crack  or  flaw  in  your  hypothesis.  A 
flaw  or  crack  in  many  of  the  hypotheses  of 


374  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

daily  life  may  be  of  little  or  no  moment  as 
affecting  the  general  correctness  of  the  conclusions 
at  which  we  may  arrive ;  but,  in  a  scientific  in- 
quiry, a  fallacy,  great  or  small,  is  always  of  im- 
portance, and  is  sure  to  be  in  the  long  run 
constantly  productive  of  mischievous,  if  not  fatal 
results. 

Do  not  allow  yourselves  to  be  misled  by  the 
common  notion  that  an  hypothesis  is  untrustworthy 
simply  because  it  is  an  hypothesis.  It  is  often 
urged,  in  respect  to  some  scientific  conclusion, 
that,  after  all,  it  is  only  an  hypothesis.  But  what 
more  have  we  to  guide  us  in  nine-tenths  of  the 
most  important  affairs  of  daily  life  than  hypotheses, 
and  often  very  ill-based  ones  ?  So  that  in  science, 
where  the  evidence  of  an  hypothesis  is  subjected 
to  the  most  rigid  examination,  we  may  rightly 
pursue  the  same  course.  You  may  have  hypo- 
theses and  hypotheses.  A  man  may  say,  if  he 
likes,  that  the  moon  is  made  of  green  cheese : 
that  is  an  hypothesis.  But  another  man,  who  has 
devoted  a  great  deal  of  time  and  attention  to  the 
subject,  and  availed  himself  of  the  most  powerful 
telescopes  and  the  results  of  the  observations  of 
others,  declares  that  in  his  opinion  it  is  probably 
composed  of  materials  very  similar  to  those  of 
which  our  own  earth  is  made  up  :  and  that  is  also 
only  an  hypothesis.  But  I  need  not  tell  you  that 
there  is  an  enormous  difference  in  the  value  of  the 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          375 

two  hypotheses.  That  one  which  is  based  on 
sound  scientific  knowledge  is  sure  to  have  a  corre- 
sponding value  ;  and  that  which  is  a  mere  hasty 
random  guess  is  likely  to  have  but  little  value. 
Every  great  step  in  our  progress  in  discovering 
causes  has  been  made  in  exactly  the  same  way  as 
that  which  I  have  detailed  to  you.  A  person 
observing  the  occurrence  of  certain  facts  and 
phenomena  asks,  naturally  enough,  what  process, 
what  kind  of  operation  known  to  occur  in  Nattrre 
applied  to  the  particular  case,  will  unravel  and 
explain  the  mystery  ?  Hence  you  have  the 
scientific  hypothesis;  and  its  value  will  be  pro- 
portionate to  the  care  and  completeness  with  which 
its  basis  had  been  tested  and  verified.  It  is  in 
these  matters  as  in  the  commonest  affairs  of  prac- 
tical life :  the  guess  of  the  fool  will  be  folly,  while 
the  guess  of  the  wise  man  will  contain  wisdom. 
In  all  case§,  you  see  that  the  value  of  the  result 
depends  on  the  patience  and  faithfulness  with 
which  the  investigator  applies  to  his  hypothesis 
every  possible  kind  of  verification. 

I  dare  say  I  may  have  to  return  to  this  point 
by  and  by ;  but  having  dealt  thus  far  with  our 
logical  methods,  I  must  now  turn  to  something 
which,  perhaps,  you  may  consider  more  interesting, 
or,  at  any  rate,  more  tangible.  But  in  reality 
there  are  but  few  things  that  can  be  more  import- 
ant for  you  to  understand  than  the  mental  pro- 
cesses and  the  means  by  which  we  obtain  scientific 
53 


376  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

conclusions  and  theories.1  Having  granted  that 
the  inquiry  is  a  proper  one,  and  having  determined 
on  the  nature  of  the  methods  we  are  to  pursue 
and  which  only  can  lead  to  success,  I  must  now 
turn  to  the  consideration  of  our  knowledge  of  the 
nature  of  the  processes  which  have  resulted  in  the 
present  condition  of  organic  nature. 

Here,  let  me  say  at  once,  lest  some  of  you  mis- 
understand me,  that  I  have  extremely  little  to 
report.  The  question  of  how  the  present  condition 
of  organic  nature  came  about,  resolves  itself  into 
two  questions.  The  first  is  :  How  has  organic  or 
living  matter  commenced  its  existence  ?  And  the 
second  is  :  How  has  it  been  perpetuated  ?  On  the 
second  question  I  shall  have  more  to  say  hereafter. 
But  on  the  first  one,  what  I  now  have  to  say  will 
be  for  the  most  part  of  a  negative  character. 

If  you  consider  what  kind  of  evidence  we  can 
have  upon  this  matter,  it  will  resolve^  itself  into 
two  kinds.  We  may  have  historical  evidence  and  we 
may  have  experimental  evidence.  It  is,  for  example, 
conceivable,  that  inasmuch  as  the  hardened  mud 
which  forms  a  considerable  portion  of  the  thick- 
ness of  the  earth's  crust  contains  faithful  records 
of  the  past  forms  of  life,  and  inasmuch  as  these 
differ  more  and  more  as  we  go  further  down, — it 
is  possible  and  conceivable  that  we  might  come  to 

1  Those  who  wish  to  study  fully  the  doctrines  of  which  I 
have  endeavoured  to  give  some  rough-and-ready  illustrations, 
must  read  Mr.  John  Stuart  Mill's  System  of  Logic. 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    377 

some  particular  bed  or  stratum  which  should  con- 
tain the  remains  of  those  creatures  with  which 
organic  life  began  upon  the  earth.  And  if  we  did 
so,  and  if  such  forms  of  organic  life  were  pre- 
servable,  we  should  have  what  I  would  call  his- 
torical evidence  of  the  mode  in  which  organic  life 
began  upon  this  planet.  Many  persons  will  tell 
you,  and  indeed  you  will  find  it  stated  in  many 
works  on  geology,  that  this  has  been  done,  and 
that  we  really  possess  such  a  record ;  there  are 
some  who  imagine  that  the  earliest  forms  of  life 
of  which  we  have  as  yet  discovered  any  record,  are 
in  truth  the  forms  in  which  animal  life  began  upon 
the  globe.  The  grounds  on  which  they  base  that 
supposition  are  these  : — That  if  you  go  through 
the  enormous  thickness  of  the  earth's  crust  and 
get  down  to  the  older  rocks,  the  higher  vertebrate 
animals — the  quadrupeds,  birds,  and  fishes — cease 
to  be  found ;  beneath  them  you  find  only  the  in- 
vertebrate animals  ;  and  in  the  deepest  and  lowest 
rocks  those  remains  become  scantier  and  scantier, 
not  in  any  very  gradual  progression,  however, 
until,  at  length,  in  what  are  supposed  to  be  the 
oldest  rocks,  the  animal  remains  which  are  found 
are  almost  always  confined  to  four  forms — Oldhamia, 
whose  precise  nature  is  not  known,  whether  plant 
or  animal ;  Lingula,  a  kind  of  mollusc  ;  Trilobites, 
a  crustacean  animal,  having  the  same  essential 
plan  of  construction,  though  differing  in  many 
details  from  a  lobster  or  crab ;  and  ffymenocaris, 


378  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

which  is  also  a  crustacean.  So  that  you  have  all 
the  Fauna  reduced,  at  this  period,  to  four  forms  : 
one  a  kind  of  animal  or  plant  that  we  know  no- 
thing about,  and  three  undoubted  animals — two 
crustaceans  and  one  mollusc. 

I  think,  considering  the  organisation  of  these 
mollusca  and  Crustacea,  and  looking  at  their  very 
complex  nature,  that  it  does  indeed  require  a  very 
strong  imagination  to  conceive  that  these  were  the 
first  created  of  all  living  things.  And  you  must 
take  into  consideration  the  fact  that  we  have  not 
the  slightest  proof  that  these  which  we  call  the 
oldest  beds  are  really  so  :  I  repeat,  we  have  not 
the  slightest  proof  of  it.  When  you  find  in  some 
places  that  in  an  enormous  thickness  of  rocks 
there  are  but  very  scanty  traces  of  life,  or  abso- 
lutely none  at  all ;  and  that  in  other  parts  of  the 
world  rocks  of  the  very  same  formation  are 
crowded  with  the  records  of  living  forms,  I  think 
it  is  impossible  to  place  any  reliance  on  the  sup- 
position, or  to  feel  one's  self  justified  in  supposing 
that  these  are  the  forms  in  which  life  first  com- 
menced. I  have  not  time  here  to  enter  upon  the 
technical  grounds  upon  which  I  am  led  to  this 
conclusion, — that  could  hardly  be  done  properly 
in  half  a  dozen  lectures  on  that  part  alone : — I 
must  content  myself  with  saying  that  I  do  not 
at  all  believe  that  these  are  the  oldest  forms 
of  life. 

I  turn  to  the  experimental  side  to  see  what 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          379 

evidence  we  have  there.  To  enable  us  to  say  that 
we  know  anything  about  the  experimental  origin- 
ation of  organisation  and  life,  the  investigator 
ought  to  be  able  to  take  inorganic  matters,  such 
as  carbonic  acid,  ammonia,  water,  and  salines,  in 
any  sort  of  inorganic  combination,  and  be  able  to 
build  them  up  into  protein  matter,  and  then  that 
protein  matter  ought  to  begin  to  live  in  an 
organic  form.  That,  nobody  has  done  as  yet,  and 
I  suspect  it  will  be  a  long  while  before  anybody 
does  do  it.  But  the  thing  is  by  no  means  so 
impossible  as  it  looks  ;  for  the  researches  of  modern 
chemistry  have  shown  us — I  won't  say  the  road 
towards  it,  but,  if  I  may  so  say,  they  have  shown 
the  finger-post  pointing  to  the  road  that  may  lead 
to  it. 

It  is  not  many  years  ago — and  you  must  recol- 
lect that  Organic  Chemistry  is  a  young  science, 
not  above  a  couple  of  generations  old,  you  must 
not  expect  too  much  of  it, — it  is  not  many  years 
ago  since  it  was  said  to  be  perfectly  impossible  to 
fabricate  any  organic  compound  ;  that  is  to  say, 
any  non-mineral  compound  which  is  to  be  found 
in  an  organised  being.  It  remained  so  for  a  very 
long  period ;  but  it  is  now  a  considerable  number 
of  years  since  a  distinguished  foreign  chemist  con- 
trived to  fabricate  urea,  a  substance  of  a  very 
complex  character,  which  forms  one  of  the  waste 
products  of  animal  structures.  And  of  late  years 
a  number  of  other  compounds,  such  as  butyric 


380  .  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

acid,  and  others,  have  been  added  to  the  list.  I 
need  not  tell  you  that  chemistry  is  an  enormous 
distance  from  the  goal  I  indicate  ;  all  I  wish  to 
point  out  to  you  is,  that  it  is  by  no  means  safe 
to  say  that  that  goal  may  not  be  reached  one 
day.  It  may  be  that  it  is  impossible  for  us 
to  produce  the  conditions  requisite  to  the  origina- 
tion of  life ;  but  we  must  speak  modestly  about 
the  matter,  and  recollect  that  Science  has  put  her 
foot  upon  the  bottom  round  of  the  ladder.  Truly 
he  would  be  a  bold  man  who  would  venture  to 
predict  where  she  will  be  fifty  years  hence. 

There  is  another  inquiry  which  bears  indirectly 
upon  this  question,  and  upon  which  I  must  say  a 
few  words.  You  are  all  of  you  aware  of  the 
phenomena  of  what  is  called  spontaneous  genera- 
tion. Our  forefathers,  down  to  the  seventeenth 
century,  or  thereabouts,  all  imagined,  in  perfectly 
good  faith,  that  certain  vegetable  and  animal 
forms  gave  birth,  in  the  process  of  their  decom- 
position, to  insect  life.  Thus,  if  you  put  a  piece 
of  meat  in  the  sun,  and  allowed  it  to  putrefy,  they 
conceived  that  the  grubs  which  soon  began  to 
appear  were  the  result  of  the  action  of  a  power  of 
spontaneous  generation  which  the  meat  contained. 
And  they  could  give  you  receipts  for  making 
various  animal  and  vegetable  preparations  which 
would  produce  particular  kinds  of  animals.  A 
very  distinguished  Italian  naturalist,  named  Redi, 
took  up  the  question,  at  a  time  when  everybody 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC  NATURE          381 

believed  in  it ;  among  others  our  own  great  Harvey, 
the  discoverer  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood. 
You  will  constantly  find  his  name  quoted,  how- 
ever, as  an  opponent  of  the  doctrine  of  spontaneous 
generation ;  but  the  fact  is,  and  you  will  see  it  if 
you  will  take  the  trouble  to  look  into  his  works, 
Harvey  believed  it  as  profoundly  as  any  man  of 
his  time ;  but  he  happened  to  enunciate  a  very 
curious  proposition — that  every  living  thing  came 
from  an  egg  ;  he  did  not  mean  to  use  the  word  in 
the  sense  in  which  we  now  employ  it,  he  only 
meant  to  say  that  every  living  thing  originated  in 
a  little  rounded  particle  of  organised  substance ; 
and  it  is  from  this  circumstance,  probably,  that 
the  notion  of  Harvey  having  opposed  the  doctrine 
originated.  Then  came  Redi,  and  he  proceeded 
to  upset  the  doctrine  in  a  very  simple  manner. 
He  merely  covered  the  piece  of  meat  with  some 
very  fine  gauze,  and  then  he  exposed  it  to  the 
same  conditions.  The  result  of  this  was  that  no 
grubs  or  insects  were  produced ;  he  proved  that 
the  grubs  originated  from  the  insects  who  came 
and  deposited  their  eggs  in  the  meat,  and  that 
they  were  hatched  by  the  heat  of  the  sun.  By 
this  kind  of  inquiry  he  thoroughly  upset  the 
doctrine  of  spontaneous  generation,  for  his  time 
at  least. 

Then  came  the  discovery  and  application  of  the 
microscope  to  scientific  inquiries,  which  showed  to 
naturalists  that  besides  the  organisms  which  they 


382  THE  CAUSES  OF   THE  xi 

already  knew  as  living  beings  and  plants,  there 
were  an  immense  number  of  minute  things  which 
could  be  obtained  apparently  almost  at  will  from 
decaying  vegetable  and  animal  forms.  Thus,  if 
you  took  some  ordinary  black  pepper  or  some  hay, 
and  steeped  it  in  water,  you  would  find  in  the  course 
of  a  few  days  that  the  water  had  become  impreg- 
nated with  an  immense  number  of  animalcules 
swimming  about  in  all  directions.  From  facts  of 
this  kind  naturalists  were  led  to  revive  the  theory 
of  spontaneous  generation.  They  were  headed 
here  by  an  English  naturalist, — Needham, — and 
afterwards  in  France  by  the  learned  Buffon.  They 
said  that  these  things  were  absolutely  begotten 
in  the  water  of  the  decaying  substances  out  of 
which  the  infusion  was  made.  It  did  not  matter 
whether  you  took  animal  or  vegetable  matter,  you 
had  only  to  steep  it  in  water  and  expose  it,  and 
you  would  soon  have  plenty  of  animalcules.  They 
made  an  hypothesis  about  this  which  was  a  very 
fair  one.  They  said,  this  matter  of  the  animal 
world,  or  of  the  higher  plants,  appears  to  be  dead, 
but  in  reality  it  has  a  sort  of  dim  life  about  it, 
which,  if  it  is  placed  under  fair  conditions,  will 
cause  it  to  break  up  into  the  forms  of  these  little 
animalcules,  and  they  will  go  through  their  lives 
in  the  same  way  as  the  animal  or  plant  of  which 
they  once  formed  a  part. 

The  question  now  became  very  hotly  debated. 
Spallanzani,  an  Italian  naturalist,  took  up  opposite 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    383 

views  to  those  of  Needham  and  Buffon,  and  by 
means  of  certain  experiments  he  showed  that  it 
was  quite  possible  to  stop  the  process  by  boiling 
the  water,  and  closing  the  vessel  in  which  it  was 
contained.  "  Oh  ! "  said  his  opponents ;  "  but  what 
do  you  know  you  may  be  doing  when  you  heat  the 
air  over  the  water  in  this  way  ?  You  may  be  de- 
stroying some  property  of  the  air  requisite  for  the 
spontaneous  generation  of  the  animalcules." 

However,  Spallanzani's  views  were  supposed  to 
be  upon  the  right  side,  and  those  of  the  others  fell 
into  discredit ;  although  the  fact  was  that  Spallan- 
zani  had  not  made  good  his  views.  Well,  then, 
the  subject  continued  to  be  revived  from  time  to 
time,  and  experiments  were  made  by  several  per- 
sons ;  but  these  experiments  were  not  altogether 
satisfactory.  It  was  found  that  if  you  put  an  in- 
fusion in  which  animalcules  would  appear  if  it  were 
exposed  to  the  air  into  a  vessel  and  boiled  it,  and 
then  sealed  up  the  mouth  of  the  vessel,  so  that  no 
air,  save  such  as  had  been  heated  to  212°,  could 
reach  its  contents,  that  then  no  animalcules  would 
be  found  ;  but  if  you  took  the  same  vessel  and  ex- 
posed the  infusion  to  the  air,  then  you  would  get 
animalcules.  Furthermore,  it  was  found  that  if 
you  connected  the  mouth  of  the  vessel  with  a  red- 
hot  tube  in  such  a  way  that  the  air  would  have  to 
pass  through  the  tube  before  reaching  the  infusion, 
that  then  you  would  get  no  animalcules.  Yet 
another  thing  was  noticed  :  if  you  took  two  flasks 


384«  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  ZI 

containing  the  same  kind  of  infusion,  and  left  one 
entirely  exposed  to  the  air,  and  in  the  mouth  of 
the  other  placed  a  ball  of  cotton  wool,  so  that  the 
air  would  have  to  filter  itself  through  it  before 
reaching  the  infusion,  that  then,  although  you 
might  have  plenty  of  animalcules  in  the  first  flask, 
you  would  certainly  obtain  none  from  the  second. 

These  experiments,  you  see,  all  tended  towards 
one  conclusion — that  the  infusoria  were  developed 
from  little  minute  spores  or  eggs  which  were  con- 
stantly floating  in  the  atmosphere,  and  which  lose 
their  power  of  germination  if  subjected  to  heat. 
But  one  observer  now  made  another  experiment, 
which  seemed  to  go  entirely  the  other  way,  and 
puzzled  him  altogether.  He  took  some  of  this 
boiled  infusion  that  I  have  been  speaking  of,  and 
by  the  use  of  a  mercurial  bath — a  kind  of  trough 
used  in  laboratories — he  deftly  inverted  a  vessel 
containing  the  infusion  into  the  mercury,  so  that 
the  latter  reached  a  little  beyond  the  level  of  the 
mouth  of  the  inverted  vessel.  You  see  that  he 
thus  had  a  quantity  of  the  infusion  shut  off  from 
any  possible  communication  with  the  outer  air  by 
being  inverted  upon  a  bed  of  mercury. 

He  then  prepared  some  pure  oxygen  and  nitro- 
gen gases,  and  passed  them  by  means  of  a  tube 
going  from  the  outside  of  the  vessel,  up  through 
the  mercury  into  the  infusion ;  so  that  he  thus 
had  it  exposed  to  a  perfectly  pure  atmosphere  of 
the  same  constituents  as  the  external  air.  Of 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         385 

course,  he  expected  he  would  get  no  infusorial 
animalcules  at  all  in  that  infusion ;  but,  to  his 
great  dismay  and  discomfiture,  he  found  he  almost 
always  did  get  them. 

Furthermore,  it  has  been  found  that  experi- 
ments made  in  the  manner  described  above  answer 
well  with  most  infusions  ;  but  that  if  you  fill  the 
vessel  with  boiled  milk,  and  then  stop  the  neck 
with  cotton-wool,  you  will  have  infusoria.  So  that 
you  see  there  were  two  experiments  that  brought 
you  to  one  kind  of  conclusion,  and  three  to  an- 
other ;  which  was  a  most  unsatisfactory  state  of 
things  to  arrive  at  in  a  scientific  inquiry. 

Some  few  years  after  this,  the  question  began 
to  be  very  hotly  discussed  in  France.  There  was 
M.  Pouchet,  a  professor  at  Rouen,  a  very  learned 
man,  but  certainly  not  a  very  rigid  experimental- 
ist. He  published  a  number  of  experiments  of  his 
own,  some  of  which  were  very  ingenious,  to  show 
that  if  you  went  to  work  in  a  proper  way,  there 
was  a  truth  in  the  doctrine  of  spontaneous  genera- 
tion. Well,  it  was  one  of  the  most  fortunate  things 
in  the  world  that  M.  Pouchet  took  up  this  question, 
because  it  induced  a  distinguished  French  chemist, 
M.  Pasteur,  to  take  up  the  question  on  the  other 
side  ;  and  he  has  certainly  worked  it  out  in  the 
most  perfect  manner.  I  am  glad  to  say,  too,  that 
he  has  published  his  researches  in  time  to  enable 
me  to  give  you  an  account  of  them.  He  verified 
all  the  experiments  which  I  have  just  mentioned 


386  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

to  you — and  then  finding  those  extraordinary 
anomalies,  as  in  the  case  of  the  mercury  bath  and 
the  milk,  he  set  himself  to  work  to  discover  their 
nature.  In  the  case  of  milk  he  found  it  to  be  a 
question  of  temperature.  Milk  in  a  fresh  state  is 
slightly  alkaline  ;  and  it  is  a  very  curious  circum- 
stance, but  this  very  slight  degree  of  alkalinity 
seems  to  have  the  effect  of  preserving  the  organ- 
isms which  fall  into  it  from  the  air  from  being 
destroyed  at  a  temperature  of  212°,  which  is  the 
boiling  point.  But  if  you  raise  the  temperature 
10°  when  you  boil  it,  the  milk  behaves  like  every- 
thing else  ;  and  if  the  air  with  which  it  comes  in 
contact,  after  being  boiled  at  this  temperature,  is 
passed  through  a  red-hot  tube,  you  will  not  get  a 
trace  of  organisms. 

He  then  turned  his  attention  to  the  mercury 
bath,  and  found  on  examination  that  the  surface  of 
the  mercury  was  almost  always  covered  with  a 
very  fine  dust.  He  found  that  even  the  mercury 
itself  was  positively  full  of  organic  matters  ;  that 
from  being  constantly  exposed  to  the  air,  it  had 
collected  an  immense  number  of  these  infusorial 
organisms  from  the  air.  Well,  under  these  circum- 
stances he  felt  that  the  case  was  quite  clear,  and 
that  the  mercury  was  not  what  it  had  appeared  to 
M.  Schwann  to  be, — a  bar  to  the  admission  of  these 
organisms ;  but  that,  in  reality,  it  acted  as  a  reservoir 
from  which  the  infusion  was  immediately  supplied 
with  the  large  quantity  that  had  so  puzzled  him. 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    387 

But  not  content  with  explaining  the  experiments 
of  others,  M.  Pasteur  went  to  work  to  satisfy  himself 
completely.  He  said  to  himself :  "  If  my  view  is 
right,  and  if,  in  point  of  fact,  all  these  appearances 
of  spontaneous  generation  are  altogether  due  to  the 
falling  of  minute  germs  suspended  in  the  atmo- 
sphere,— why,  I  ought  not  only  to  be  able  to  show 
the  germs,  but  I  ought  to  be  able  to  catch 
and  sow  them,  and  produce  the  resulting  organ- 
isms." He,  accordingly,  constructed  a  very  in- 
genious apparatus  to  enable  him  to  accomplish  the 
trapping  of  the  "  germ  dust  "  in  the  air.  He  fixed 
in  the  window  of  his  room  a  glass  tube,  in  the 
centre  of  which  he  had  placed  a  ball  of  gun-cotton, 
which,  as  you  all  know,  is  ordinary  cotton-wool, 
which,  from  having  been  steeped  in  strong  acid,  is 
converted  into  a  substance  of  great  explosive  power. 
It  is  also  soluble  in  alcohol  and  ether.  One  end 
of  the  glass  tube  was,  of  course,  open  to  the  ex- 
ternal air ;  and  at  the  other  end  of  it  he  placed  an 
aspirator,  a  contrivance  for  causing  a  current  of 
the  external  air  to  pass  through  the  tube.  He 
kept  this  apparatus  going  for  four-and-twenty 
hours,  and  then  removed  the  dusted  gun-cotton, 
and  dissolved  it  in  alcohol  and  ether.  He  then 
allowed  this  to  stand  for  a  few  hours,  and  the  re- 
sult was,  that  a  very  fine  dust  was  gradually  de- 
posited at  the  bottom  of  it.  That  dust,  on  being 
transferred  to  the  stage  of  a  microscope,  was  found 
to  contain  an  enormous  number  of  starch  grains. 


388  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

You  know  that  the  materials  of  our  food  and  the 
greater  portion  of  plants  are  composed  of  starch, 
and  we  are  constantly  making  use  of  it  in  a  variety 
of  ways,  so  that  there  is  always  a  quantity  of  it 
suspended  in  the  air.  It  is  these  starch  grains 
which  form  many  of  those  bright  specks  that  we 
see  dancing  in  a  ray  of  light  sometimes.  But  be- 
sides these,  M.  Pasteur  found  also  an  immense 
number  of  other  organic  substances  such  as  spores 
of  fungi,  which  had  been  floating  about  in  the  air 
and  had  got  caged  in  this  way. 

He  went  farther,  and  said  to  himself,  "  If  these 
really  are  the  things  that  give  rise  to  the  appear- 
ance of  spontaneous  generation,  I  ought  to  be  able 
to  take  a  ball  of  this  dusted  gun-cotton  and  put  it 
into  one  of  my  vessels,  containing  that  boiled  in- 
fusion which  has  been  kept  away  from  the  air,  and 
in  which  no  infusoria  are  at  present  developed,  and 
then,  if  I  am  right,  the  introduction  of  this  gun- 
cotton  will  give  rise  to  organisms." 

Accordingly,  he  took  one  of  these  vessels  of  in- 
fusion, which  had  been  kept  eighteen  months, 
without  the  least  appearance  of  life  in  it,  and  by  a 
most  ingenious  contrivance,  he  managed  to  break 
it  open  and  introduce  such  a  ball  of  gun-cotton, 
without  allowing  the  infusion  or  the  cotton  ball  to 
come  into  contact  with  any  air  but  that  which  had 
been  subjected  to  a  red  heat,  and  in  twenty-four 
hours  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  finding  all  the  in- 
dications of  what  had  been  hitherto  called  spon- 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          389 

taneous  generation.  He  had  succeeded  in  catching 
the  germs  and  developing  organisms  in  the  way 
he  had  anticipated. 

It  now  struck  him  that  the  truth  of  his  conclu- 
sions might  be  demonstrated  without  all  the  appa- 
ratus he  had  employed.  To  do  this,  he  took  some 
decaying  animal  or  vegetable  substance,  such  as 
urine,  which  is  an  extremely  decomposable  sub- 
stance, or  the  juice  of  yeast,'  or  perhaps  some  other 
artificial  preparation,  and  filled  a  vessel  having  a 
long  tubular  neck  with  it.  He  then  boiled  the 
liquid  and  bent  that  long  neck  into  an  S  shape  or 
zig-zag,  leaving  it  open  at  the  end.  The  infusion 
then  gave  no  trace  of  any  appearance  of  spontaneous 
generation,  however  long  it  might  be  left,  as  all 
the  germs  in  the  air  were  deposited  in  the  begin- 
ning of  the  bent  neck.  He  then  cut  the  tube  close 
to  the  vessel,  and  allowed  the  ordinary  air  to  have 
free  and  direct  access  ;  and  the  result  of  that  was 
the  appearance  of  organisms  in  it,  as  soon  as  the 
infusion  had  been  allowed  to  stand  long  enough  to 
allow  of  the  growth  of  those  it  received  from  the 
air,  which  was  about  forty-eight  hours.  The  re- 
sult of  M.  Pasteur's  experiments  proved,  therefore, 
in  the  most  conclusive  manner,  that  all  the  appear- 
ances of  spontaneous  generation  arose  from  nothing 
more  than  the  deposition  of  the  germs  of  organisms 
which  were  constantly  floating  in  the  air. 

To  this  conclusion,  however,  the  objection  was 
made,  that  if  that  were  the  cause,  then  the  air 


390  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE  xi 

would  contain  such  an  enormous  number  of  these 
germs,  that  it  would  be  a  continual  fog.  But  M. 
Pasteur  replied  that  they  are  not  there  in  any- 
thing like  the  number  Ave  might  suppose,  and  that 
an  exaggerated  view  has  been  held  on  that  subject; 
he  showed  that  the  chances  of  animal  or  vegetable 
life  appearing  in  infusions,  depend  entirely  on  the 
conditions  under  which  they  are  exposed.  If  they 
are  exposed  to  the  ordinary  atmosphere  around 
us,  why,  of  course,  you  may  have  organisms  ap- 
pearing early.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  if  they  are 
exposed  to  air  at  a  great  height,  or  in  some  very 
quiet  cellar,  you  will  often  not  find  a  single  trace 
of  life. 

So  that  M.  Pasteur  arrived  at  last  at  the  clear 
and  definite  result,  that  all  these  appearances  are 
like  the  case  of  the  worms  in  the  piece  of  meat, 
which  was  refuted  by  Redi,  simply  germs  carried 
by  the  air  and  deposited  in  the  liquids  in  which 
they  afterwards  appear.  For  my  own  part,  I  con- 
ceive that,  with  the  particulars  of  M.  Pasteur's  ex- 
periments before  us,  we  cannot  fail  to  arrive  at  his 
conclusions  ;  and  that  the  doctrine  of  spontaneous 
generation  has  received  a  final  coup  de  grdce. 

You,  of  course,  understand  that  all  this  in  no 
way  interferes  with  the  possibility  of  the  fabrica- 
tion of  organic  matters  by  the  direct  method  to 
which  I  have  referred,  remote  as  that  possibility 
may  be. 


IV 


THE  PERPETUATION    OF    LIVING  BEINGS,  HEREDI- 
TARY  TRANSMISSION   AND  VARIATION. 

THE  inquiry  which  we  undertook,  at  our  last 
meeting,  into  the  state  of  our  knowledge  of  the 
causes  of  the  phenomena  of  organic  nature, — of 
the  past  and  of  the  present, — resolved  itself  into 
two  subsidiary  inquiries  :  the  first  was,  whether  we 
know  anything,  either  historically  or  experimen- 
tally, of  the  mode  of  origin  of  living  beings;  the 
second  subsidiary  inquiry  was,  whether,  granting 
the  origin,  we  know  anything  about  the  perpetua- 
tion and  modifications  of  the  forms  of  organic  beings. 
The  reply  which  I  had  to  give  to  the  first  question 
was  altogether  negative,  and  the  chief  result  of  my 
last  lecture  was,  that,  neither  historically  nor  ex- 
perimentally, do  we  at  present  know  anything 
whatsoever  about  the  origin  of  living  forms.  We 
saw  that,  historically,  we  are  not  likely  to  know 
anything  about  it,  although  we  may  perhaps  learn 
something  experimentally  ;  but  that  at  present  we 
are  an  enormous  distance  from  the  goal  I  indicated. 

54 


392  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

I  now,  then,  take  up  the  next  question,  What 
do  we  know  of  the  reproduction,  the  perpetuation, 
and  the  modifications  of  the  forms  of  living  beings, 
supposing  that  we  have  put  the  question  as  to  their 
origination  on  one  side,  and  have  assumed  that  at 
present  the  causes  of  their  origination  are  beyond 
us,  and  that  we  know  nothing  about  them  ?  Upon 
this  question  the  state  of  our  knowledge  is  ex- 
tremely different ;  it  is  exceedingly  large  :  and,  if 
not  complete,  our  experience  is  certainly  most  ex- 
tensive. It  would  be  impossible  to  lay  it  all  before 
you,  and  the  most  I  can  do,  or  need  do  to-night,  is 
to  take  up  the  principal  points  and  put  them  be- 
fore you  with  such  prominence  as  may  subserve 
the  purposes  of  our  present  argument. 

The  method  of  the  perpetuation  of  organic  beings 
is  of  two  kinds, — the  non-sexual  and  the  sexual.  In 
the  first  the  perpetuation  takes  place  from  and  by 
a  particular  act  of  an  individual  organism,  which 
sometimes  may  not  be  classed  as  belonging  to  any 
sex  at  all.  In  the  second  case,  it  is  in  con- 
sequence of  the  mutual  action  and  interaction  of 
certain  portions  of  the  organisms  of  usually  two 
distinct  individuals, — the  male  and  the  female.  The 
cases  of  non-sexual  perpetuation  are  by  no  means 
so  common  as  the  cases  of  sexual  perpetuation ; 
and  they  are  by  no  means  so  common  in  the  animal 
as  in  the  vegetable  world.  You  are  all  probably 
familiar  with  the  fact,  as  a  matter  of  experience, 
that  you  can  propagate  plants  by  means  of  what 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    393 

are  called  "  cuttings  " ;  for  example,  that  by  tak- 
ing a  cutting  from  a  geranium  plant,  and  rearing 
it  properly,  by  supplying  it  with  light  and  warmth 
and  nourishment  from  the  earth,  it  grows  up  and 
takes  the  form  of  its  parent,  having  all  the  pro- 
perties and  peculiarities  of  the  original  plant. 

Sometimes  this  process,  which  the  gardener  per- 
forms artificially,  takes  place  naturally ;  that  is  to 
say,  a  little  bulb,  or  portion  of  the  plant,  detaches 
itself,  drops  off,  and  becomes  capable  of  growing 
as  a  separate  thing.  That  is  the  case  with  many 
bulbous  plants,  which  throw  off  in  this  way  second- 
ary bulbs,  which  are  lodged  in  the  ground  and 
become  developed  into  plants.  This  is  a  non-sexual 
process,  and  from  it  results  the  repetition  or  re- 
production of  the  form  of  the  original  being  from 
which  the  bulb  proceeds. 

Among  animals  the  same  thing  takes  place. 
Among  the  lower  forms  of  animal  life,  the  infusorial 
animalculae  we  have  already  spoken  of  throw  off 
certain  portions,  or  break  themselves  up  in  various 
directions,  sometimes  transversely  or  sometimes 
longitudinally ;  or  they  may  give  off  buds,  which 
detach  themselves  and  develop  into  their  proper 
forms.  There  is  the  common  fresh-water  polype, 
for  instance,  which  multiplies  itself  in  this  way. 
Just  in  the  same  way  as  the  gardener  is  able  to 
multiply  and  reproduce  the  peculiarities  and  char- 
acters of  particular  plants  by  means  of  cuttings, 
so  can  the  physiological  experimentalist — as  was 


394  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

shown  by  the  Abb4  Trembley  many  years  ago — so 
can  he  do  the  same  thing  with  many  of  the  lower 
forms  of  animal  life.  M.  de  Trembley  showed 
that  you  could  take  a  polype  and  cut  it  into  two, 
or  four,  or  many  pieces,  mutilating  it  in  all  direc- 
tions, and  the  pieces  would  still  grow  up  and  re- 
produce completely  the  original  form  of  the  animal. 
These  are  all  cases  of  non-sexual  multiplication, 
and  there  are  other  instances,  and  still  more  extra- 
ordinary ones,  in  which  this  process  takes  place 
naturally,  in  a  more  hidden,  a  more  recondite  kind 
of  way.  You  are  all  of  you  familiar  with  that 
little  green  insect,  the  Aphis  or  blight,  as  it  is 
called.  These  little  animals,  during  a  very  con- 
siderable part  of  their  existence,  multiply  them- 
selves by  means  of  a  kind  of  internal  budding,  the 
buds  being  developed  into  essentially  non-sexual 
animals,  which  are  neither  male  nor  female  ;  they 
become  converted  into  young  Aphides,  which  re- 
peat the  process,  and  their  offspring  after  them, 
and  so  on  again  ;  you  may  go  on  for  nine  or  ten, 
or  even  twenty  or  more  successions  ;  and  there  is  no 
very  good  reason  to  say  how  soon  it  might  terminate, 
or  how  long  it  might  not  go  on  if  the  proper  con- 
ditions of  warmth  and  nourishment  were  kept  up. 
Sexual  reproduction  is  quite  a  distinct  matter. 
Here,  in  all  these  cases,  what  is  required  is  the 
detachment  of  two  portions  of  the  parental 
organisms,  which  portions  we  know  as  the  egg 
or  the  spermatozoon.  In  plants  it  is  the  ovule 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          395 

and  the  pollen-grain,  as  in  the  flowering  plants,  or 
the  ovule  and  the  antherozooid,  as  in  the  flower- 
less.  Among  all  forms  of  animal  life,  the  sperma- 
tozoa proceed  from  the  male  sex,  and  the  egg  is 
the  product  of  the  female.  Now,  what  is  remark- 
able about  this  mode  of  reproduction  is  this,  that 
the  egg  by  itself,  or  the  spermatozoa  by  themselves, 
are  unable  to  assume  the  parental  form ;  but  if 
they  be  brought  into  contact  with  one  another, 
the  effect  of  the  mixture  of  organic  substances 
proceeding  from  two  sources  appears  to  confer  an 
altogether  new  vigour  to  the  mixed  product.  This 
process  is  brought  about,  as  we  all  know,  by  the 
sexual  intercourse  of  the  two  sexes,  and  is  called 
the  act  of  impregnation.  The  result  of  this  act 
on  the  part  of  the  male  and  female  is,  that  the 
formation  of  a  new  being  is  set  up  in  the  ovule  or 
egg ;  this  ovule  or  egg  soon  begins  to  be  divided 
and  subdivided,  and  to  be  fashioned  into  various 
complex  organs,  and  eventually  to  develop  into 
the  form  of  one  of  its  parents,  as  I  explained  in 
the  first  lecture.  These  are  the  processes  by 
which  the  perpetuation  of  organic  beings  is  secured. 
Why  there  should  be  the  two  modes — why  this 
re-invigoration  should  be  required  on  the  part  of 
the  female  element  we  do  not  know  ;  but  it  is  most 
assuredly  the  fact,  and  it  is  presumable,  that,  how- 
ever long  the  process  of  non-sexual  multiplication 
could  be  continued — I  say  there  is  good  reason  to 
believe  that  it  would  come  to  an  end  if  a  new 


396  THE    CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

commencement  were  not  obtained  by  a  conjunc- 
tion of  the  two  sexual  elements. 

That  character  which  is  common  to  these  two 
distinct  processes  is  this,  that,  whether  we  con- 
sider the  reproduction,  or  perpetuation,  or  modifica- 
tion of  organic  beings  as  they  take  place  non-sexu- 
ally,  or  as  they  may  take  place  sexually — in  either 
case,  I  say,  the  offspring  has  a  constant  tendency 
to  assume,  speaking  generally,  the  character  of 
the  parent.  As  I  said  just  now,  if  you  take  a  slip 
of  a  plant,  and  tend  it  with  care,  it  will  eventually 
grow  up  and  develop  into  a  plant  like  that  from 
which  it  had  sprung;  and  this  tendency  is  so 
strong  that,  as  gardeners  know,  this  mode  of 
multiplying  by  means  of  cuttings  is  the  only  secure 
mode  of  propagating  very  many  varieties  of  plants  ; 
the  peculiarity  of  the  primitive  stock  seems  to  be 
better  preserved  if  you  propagate  it  by  means  of  a 
slip  than  if  you  resort  to  the  sexual  mode. 

Again,  in  experiments  upon  the  lower  animals, 
such  as  the  polype,  to  which  I  have  referred,  it  is 
most  extraordinary  that,  although  cut  up  into 
various  pieces,  each  particular  piece  will  grow  up 
into  the  form  of  the  primitive  stock ;  the  head,  if 
separated,  will  reproduce  the  body  and  the  tail; 
and  if  you  cut  off  the  tail,  you  will  find  that  that 
will  reproduce  the  body  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
members,  without  in  any  way  deviating  from  the 
plan  of  the  organism  from  which  these  portions 
have  been  detached.  And  so  far  does  this  go,  that 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    397 

some  experimentalists  have  carefully  examined  the 
lower  orders  of  animals, — among  them  the  Abbe* 
Spallanzani,  who  made  a  number  of  experiments 
upon  snails  and  salamanders, — and  have  found 
that  they  might  mutilate  them  to  an  incredible 
extent ;  that  you  might  cut  off  the  jaw  or  the 
greater  part  of  the  head,  or  the  leg  or  the  tail,  and 
repeat  the  experiment  several  times,  perhaps  cut- 
ting off  the  same  member  again  and  again ;  and 
yet  each  of  those  types  would  be  reproduced 
according  to  the  primitive  type  :  Nature  making 
no  mistake,  never  putting  on  a  fresh  kind  of  leg, 
or  head,  or  tail,  but  always  tending  to  repeat  and 
to  return  to  the  primitive  type. 

It  is  the  same  in  sexual  reproduction  :  it  is  a 
matter  of  perfectly  common  experience,  that  the 
tendency  on  the  part  of  the  offspring  always  is, 
speaking  broadly,  to  reproduce  the  form  of  the 
parents.  The  proverb  has  it  that  the  thistle  does 
not  bring  forth  grapes  ;  so,  among  ourselves,  there 
is  always  a  likeness,  more  or  less  marked  and  dis- 
tinct, between  children  and  their  parents.  That  is 
a  matter  of  familiar  and  ordinary  observation.  We 
notice  the  same  thing  occurring  in  the  cases  of  the 
domestic  animals— dogs,  for  instance,  and  their 
offspring.  In  all  these  cases  of  propagation  and 
perpetuation,  there  seems  to  be  a  tendency  in  the 
offspring  to  take  the  characters  of  the  parental 
organisms.  To  that  tendency  a  special  name  is  given 
— and  as  I  may  very  often  use  it,  I  will  write  it 


398  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

up  here  on  this  black-board  that  you  may  remem- 
ber it — it  is  called  Atavism ;  it  expresses  this 
tendency  to  revert  to  the  ancestral  type,  and  comes 
from  the  Latin  word  atavus,  ancestor. 

Well,  this  Atavism  which  I  shall  speak  of,  is,  as 
I  said  before,  one  of  the  most  marked  and  striking 
tendencies  of  organic  beings;  but,  side  by  side 
with  this  hereditary  tendency  there  is  an  equally 
distinct  and  remarkable  tendency  to  variation. 
The  tendency  to  reproduce  the  original  stock  has, 
as  it  were,  its  limits,  and  side  by  side  with  it  there 
is  a  tendency  to  vary  in  certain  directions,  as  if 
there  were  two  opposing  powers  working  upon  the 
organic  being,  one  tending  to  take  it  in  a  straight 
line,  and  the  other  tending  to  make  it  diverge 
from  that  straight  line,  first  to  one  side  and  then 
to  the  other. 

So  that  you  see  these  two  tendencies  need  not 
precisely  contradict  one  another,  as  the  ultimate 
result  may  not  always  be  very  remote  from  what 
would  have  been  the  case  if  the  line  had  been  quite 
straight. 

This  tendency  to  variation  is  less  marked  in  that 
mode  of  propagation  which  takes  place  non-sexu- 
ally ;  it  is  in  that  mode  that  the  minor  characters  of 
animal  and  vegetable  structures  are  most  com- 
pletely preserved.  Still,  it  will  happen  sometimes, 
that  the  gardener,  when  he  has  planted  a  cutting 
of  some  favourite  plant,  will  find,  contrary  to  his 
expectation,  that  the  slip  grows  up  a  little  different 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF  ORGANIC  NATURE          399 

from  the  primitive  stock — that  it  produces  flowers 
of  a  different  colour  or  make,  or  some  deviation 
in  one  way  or  another.  This  is  what  is  called  the 
"  sporting  "  of  plants. 

In  animals  the  phenomena  of  non-sexual  pro- 
pagation are  so  obscure,  that  at  present  we  cannot 
be  said  to  know  much  about  them  ;  but  if  we  turn  to 
that  mode  of  perpetuation  which  results  from  the 
sexual  process,  then  we  find  variation  a  perfectly 
constant  occurrence,  to  a  certain  extent ;  and,  in- 
deed, I  think  that  a  certain  amount  of  variation 
from  the  primitive  stock  is  the  necessary  result  of 
the  method  of  sexual  propagation  itself;  for.  inas- 
much as  the  thing  propagated  proceeds  from  two 
organisms  of  different  sexes  and  different  makes 
and  temperaments,  and  as  the  offspring  is  to  be 
either  of  one  sex  or  the  other,  it  is  quite  clear  that 
it  cannot  be  an  exact  diagonal  of  the  two,  or  it 
would  be  of  no  sex  at  all ;  it  cannot  be  an  exact 
intermediate  form  between  that  of  each  of  its 
parents — it  must  deviate  to  one  side  or  the  other. 
You  do  not  find  that  the  male  follows  the  precise 
type  of  the  male  parent,  nor  does  the  female  al- 
ways inherit  the  precise  characteristics  of  the 
mother, — there  is  always  a  proportion  of  the  female 
character  in  the  male  offspring,  and  of  the  male 
character  in  the  female  offspring.  That  must  be  quite 
plain  to  all  of  you  who  have  looked  atall  attentively 
on  your  own  children  or  those  of  your  neighbours ; 
you  will  have  noticed  how  very  often  it  may  hap- 


400  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

pen  that  the  son  shall  exhibit  the  maternal  type 
of  character,  or  the  daughter  possess  the  character- 
istics of  the  father's  family.  There  are  all  sorts  of 
intermixtures  and  intermediate  conditions  between 
the  two,  where  complexion,  or  beauty,  or  fifty  other 
different  peculiarities  belonging  to  either  side  of 
the  house,  are  reproduced  in  other  members  of  the 
same  family.  Indeed,  it  is  sometimes  to  be  re- 
marked in  this  kind  of  variation,  that  the  variety 
belongs,  strictly  speaking,  to  neither  of  the  im- 
mediate parents ;  you  will  see  a  child  in  a  family 
who  is  not  like  either  its  father  or  its  mother ;  but 
some  old  person  who  knew  its  grandfather  or 
grandmother,  or,  it  may  be,  an  uncle,  or,  perhaps, 
even  a  more  distant  relative  will  see  a  great 
similarity  between  the  child  and  one  of  these.  In 
this  way  it  constantly  happens  that  the  character- 
istic of  some  previous  member  of  the  family  comes 
out  and  is  reproduced  and  recognised  in  the  most 
unexpected  manner. 

But  apart  from  that  matter  of  general  experience, 
there  are  some  cases  which  put  that  curious  mix- 
ture in  a  very  clear  light.  You  are  aware  that  the 
offspring  of  the  ass  and  the  horse,  or  rather  of  the 
he-ass  and  the  mare,  is  what  is  called  a  mule  ;  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  offspring  of  the  stallion 
and  the  she-ass  is  what  is  called  a  hinny.  It  is 
a  very  rare  thing  in  this  country  to  see  a  hinny. 
I  never  saw  one  myself;  but  they  have  been  very 
carefully  studied.  Now,  the  curious  thing  is  this, 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          401 

that  although  you  have  the  same  elements  in  the 
experiment  in  each  case,  the  offspring  is  entirely 
different  in  character,  according  as  the  male  influ- 
ence comes  from  the  ass  or  the  horse.  Where  the 
ass  is  the  male,  as  in  the  case  of  the  mule,  you 
find  that  the  head  is  like  that  of  the  ass,  that  the 
ears  are  long,  the  tail  is  tufted  at  the  end,  the  feet 
are  small,  and  the  voice  is  an  unmistakable  bray ; 
these  are  all  points  of  similarity  to  the  ass ;  but, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  barrel  of  the  body  and  the 
cut  of  the  neck  are  much  more  like  those  of  the 
mare.  Then,  if  you  look  at  the  hinny, — the  result 
of  the  union  of  the  stallion  and  the  she-ass,  then 
you  find  it  is  the  horse  that  has  the  predominance ; 
that  the  head  is  more  like  that  of  the  horse,  the 
ears  are  shorter,  the  legs  coarser,  an4  the  type  is 
altogether  altered  ;  while  the  voice,  instead  of  being 
a  bray,  is  the  ordinary  neigh  of  the  horse.  Here, 
you  see,  is  a  most  curious  thing  :  you  take  exactly 
the  same  elements,  ass  and  horse,  but  you  combine 
the  sexes  in  a  different  manner,  and  the  result  is 
modified  accordingly.  You  have  in  this  case,  how- 
ever, a  result  which  is  not  general  and  universal — 
there  is  usually  an  important  preponderance,  but 
not  always  on  the  same  side. 

Here,  then,  is  one  intelligible,  and,  perhaps, 
necessary  cause  of  variation :  the  fact,  that  there 
are  two  sexes  sharing  in  the  production  of  the  off- 
spring, and  that  the  share  taken  by  each  is  differ- 
ent and  variable,  not  only  for  each  combination, 


402  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

but    also   for    different    members    of   the    same 
family. 

Secondly,  there  is  a  variation,  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent— though,  in  all  probability,  the  influence  of 
this  cause  has  been  very  much  exaggerated — but 
there  is  no  doubt  that  variation  is  produced,  to  a 
certain  extent,  by  what  are  commonly  known  as 
external  conditions, — such  as  temperature,  food, 
warmth,  and  moisture.  In  the  long  run,  every 
variation  depends,  in  some  sense,  upon  external 
conditions,  seeing  that  everything  has  a  cause  of 
its  own.  I  use  the  term  "  external  conditions " 
now  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  ordinarily  em- 
ployed :  certain  it  is,  that  external  conditions  have 
a  definite  effect.  You  may  take  a  plant  which  has 
single  flowess,  and  by  dealing  with  the  soil,  and 
nourishment,  and  so  on,  you  may  by  and  by  con- 
vert single  flowers  into  double  flowers,  and  make 
thorns  shoot  out  into  branches.  You  may  thicken 
or  make  various  modifications  in  the  shape  of  the 
fruit.  In  animals,  too,  you  may  produce  analogous 
changes  in  this  way,  as  in  the  case  of  that  deep 
bronze  colour  which  persons  rarely  lose  after 
having  passed  any  length  of  time  in  tropical  coun- 
tries. You  may  also  alter  the  development  of  the 
muscles  very  much,  by  dint  of  training ;  all  the 
world  knows  that  exercise  has  a  great  effect  in  this 
way  ;  we  always  expect  to  find  the  arm  of  a  black- 
smith hard  and  wiry,  and  possessing  a  large 
development  of  the  brachial  muscles.  No  doubt 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC  NATURE         403 

training,  which  is  one  of  the  forms  of  external 
conditions,  converts  what  are  originally  only  in- 
structions, teachings,  into  habits,  or,  in  other 
words,  into  organisations,  to  a  great  extent;  but 
this  second  cause  of  variation  cannot  be  considered 
to  be  by  any  means  a  large  one.  The  third  cause 
that  I  have  to  mention,  however,  is  a  very  exten- 
sive one.  It  is  one  that,  for  want  of  a  better 
name,  has  been  called  "  spontaneous  variation "  ; 
which  means  that  when  we  do  not  know  anything 
about  the  cause  of  phenomena,  we  call  it  spon- 
taneous. In  the  orderly  chain  of  causes  and 
effects  in  this  world,  there  are  very  few  things  of 
which  it  can  be  said  with  truth  that  they  are 
spontaneous.  Certainly  not  in  these  physical 
matters — in  these  there  is  nothing  of  the  kind — 
everything  depends  on  previous  conditions.  But 
when  we  cannot  trace  the  cause  of  phenomena, 
we  call  them  spontaneous. 

Of  these  variations,  multitudinous  as  they  are, 
but  little  is  known  with  perfect  accuracy.  I  will 
mention  to  you  some  two  or  three  cases,  because 
they  are  very  remarkable  in  themselves,  and  also 
because  I  shall  want  to  use  them  afterwards. 
Reaumur,  a  famous  French  naturalist,  a  great 
many  years  ago,  in  an  essay  which  he  wrote  upon 
the  art  of  hatching  chickens — which  was  indeed  a 
very  curious  essay — had  occasion  to  speak  of 
variations  and  monstrosities.  One  very  remark- 
able case  had  come  under  his  notice  of  a  variation 


404  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

in  the  form  of  a  human  member,  in  the  person 
of  a  Maltese,  of  the  name  of  Gratio  Kelleia,  who 
was  born  with  six  fingers  upon  each  hand,  and  the 
like  number  of  toes  to  each  of  his  feet.  That 
was  a  case  of  spontaneous  variation.  Nobody 
knows  why  he  was  born  with  that  number  of 
fingers  and  toes,  and  as  we  don't  know,  we  call  it 
a  case  of  "  spontaneous "  variation.  There  is 
another  remarkable  case  also.  I  select  these, 
because  they  happen  to  have  been  observed  and 
noted  very  carefully  at  the  time.  It  frequently 
happens  that  a  variation  occurs,  but  the  persons 
who  notice  it  do  not  take  any  care  in  noting  down 
the  particulars,  until  at  length,  when  inquiries 
come  to  be  made,  the  exact  circumstances  are 
forgotten;  and  hence,  multitudinous  as  may  be 
such  "  spontaneous  "  variations,  it  is  exceedingly 
difficult  to  get  at  the  origin  of  them. 

The  second  case  is  one  of  which  you  may  find 
the  whole  details  in  the  "  Philosophical  Transac- 
tions "  for  the  year  1813,  in  a  paper  communicated 
by  Colonel  Humphrey  to  the  President  of  the 
Royal  Society — "  On  a  new  Variety  in  the  Breed 
of  Sheep,"  giving  an  account  of  a  very  remarkable 
breed  of  sheep,  which  at  one  time  was  well  known 
in  the  northern  states  of  America,  and  which 
went  by  the  name  of  the  Ancon  or  the  Otter 
breed  of  sheep.  In  the  year  1791,  there  was  a 
farmer  of  the  name  of  Seth  Wright  in  Massa- 
chusetts, who  had  a  flock  of  sheep,  consisting  of  a 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          405 

ram  and,  I  think,  of  some  twelve  or  thirteen  ewes. 
Of  this  flock  of  ewes,  one  at  the  breeding-time 
bore  a  lamb  which  was  very  singularly  formed  ;  it 
had  a  very  long  body,  very  short  legs,  and  those 
legs  were  bowed.  I  will  tell  you  by  and  by  how 
this  singular  variation  in  the  breed  of  sheep  came 
to  be  noted,  and  to  have  the  prominence  that  it 
now  has.  For  the  present,  I  mention  only  these 
two  cases  ;  but  the  extent  of  variation  in  the  breed 
of  animals  is  perfectly  obvious  to  any  one  who  has 
studied  natural  history  with  ordinary  attention,  or 
to  any  person  who  compares  animals  with  others 
of  the  same  kind.  It  is  strictly  true  that  there 
are  never  any  two  specimens  which  are  exactly 
alike ;  however  similar,  they  will  always  differ  in 
some  certain  particular. 

Now  let  us  go  back  to  Atavism — to  the  here- 
ditary tendency  I  spoke  of.  What  will  come  of  a 
variation  when  you  breed  from  it,  when  Atavism 
comes,  if  I  may  say  so,  to  intersect  variation  ? 
The  two  cases  of  which  I  have  mentioned  the 
history  give  a  most  excellent  illustration  of  what 
occurs.  Gratio  Kelleia,  the  Maltese,  married  when 
he  was  twenty-two  years  of  age,  and,  as  I  suppose 
there  were  no  six-fingered  ladies  in  Malta,  he 
married  an  ordinary  five-fingered  person.  The 
result  of  that  marriage  was  four  children;  the 
first,  who  was  christened  Salvator,  had  six  fingres 
and  six  toes,  like  his  father;  the  second  was 
George,  who  had  five  fingers  and  toes,  but  one  of 


406  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

them  was  deformed,  showing  a  tendency  to  varia- 
tion ;  the  third  was  Andr&  ;  he  had  five  fingers 
and  five  toes,  quite  perfect ;  the  fourth  was  a  girl, 
Marie ;  she  had  five  fingers  and  five  toes,  but  her 
thumbs  were  deformed,  showing  a  tendency  toward 
the  sixth. 

These  children  grew  up,  and  when  they  came  to 
adult  years,  they  all  married,  and  of  course  it 
happened  that  they  all  married  five-fingered  and 
five-toed  persons.  Now  let  us  see  what  were  the 
results.  Salvator  had  four  children ;  they  were 
two  boys,  a  girl,  and  another  boy ;  the  first  two 
boys  and  the  girl  were  six-fingered  and  six-toed 
like  their  grandfather ;  the  fourth  boy  had  only 
five  fingers  and  five  toes.  George  had  only  four 
children  ;  there  were  two  girls  with  six  fingers 
and  six  toes ;  there  was  one  girl  with  six  fingers 
and  five  toes  on  the  right  side,  and  five  fingers 
and  five  toes  on  the  left  side,  so  that  she  was  half 
and  half.  The  last,  a  boy,  had  five  fingers  and 
five  toes.  The  third,  Andre,  you  will  recollect, 
was  perfectly  well-formed,  and  he  had  many 
children  whose  hands  and  feet  were  all  regularly 
developed.  Marie,  the  last,  who,  of  course,  mar- 
ried a  man  who  had  only  five  fingars,  had  four 
children ;  the  first,  a  boy,  was  born  with  six  toes, 
but  the  other  three  were  normal. 

Now  observe  what  very  extraordinary  phenomena 
are  presented  here.  You  have  an  accidental  varia- 
tion giving  rise  to  what  you  may  call  a  monstrosity ; 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         407 

you  have  that  monstrosity  or  variation  diluted 
in  the  first  instance  by  an  admixture  with 
a  female  of  normal  construction,  and  you  would 
naturally  expect  that,  in  the  results  of  such  an 
union,  the  monstrosity,  if  repeated,  would  be  in 
equal  proportion  with  the  normal  type  ;  that  is  to 
say,  that  the  children  would  be  half  and  half,  some 
taking  the  peculiarity  of  the  father,  and  the  others 
being  of  the  purely  normal  type  of  the  mother; 
but  you  see  we  have  a  great  preponderance  of  the 
abnormal  type.  Well,  this  comes  to  be  mixed  once 
more  with  the  pure,  the  normal  type,  and  the  ab- 
normal is  again  produced  in  large  proportion,  not- 
withstanding the  second  dilution.  Now  what 
would  have  happened  if  these  abnormal  types  had 
intermarried  with  each  other ;  that  is  to  say,  sup- 
pose the  two  boys  of  Salvator  had  taken  it  into 
their  heads  to  marry  their  first  cousins,  the  two 
first  girls  of  George,  their  uncle  ?  You  will  remem- 
ber that  these  are  all  of  the  abnormal  type  of  their 
grandfather.  The  result  would  probably  have  been, 
that  their  offspring  would  have  been  in  every  case 
a  further  development  of  that  abnormal  type.  You 
see  it  is  only  in  the  fourth,  in  the  person  of  Marie, 
that  the  tendency,  when  it  appears  but  slightly  in 
the  second  generation,  is  washed  out  in  the  third, 
while-  the  progeny  of  Andre,  who  escaped  in  the 
first  instance,  escape  altogether. 

We  have  in  this  case  a  good  example  of  nature's 
tendency  to  the  perpetuation  of  a  variation.     Here 
55 


408  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

it  is  certainly  a  variation  which  carried  with  it  no 
use  or  benefit ;  and  yet  you  see  the  tendency  to 
perpetuation  may  be  so  strong,  that,  notwithstand- 
ing a  great  admixture  of  pure  blood,  the  variety 
continues  itself  up  to  the  third  generation,  which 
is  largely  marked  with  it.  In  this  case,  as  I  have 
said,  there  was  no  means  of  the  second  generation 
intermarrying  with  any  but  five-fingered  persons, 
and  the  question  naturally  suggests  itself,  What 
would  have  been  the  result  of  such  marriage  ? 
Reaumur  narrates  this  case  only  as  far  as  the  third 
generation.  Certainly  it  would  have  been  an  ex- 
ceedingly curious  thing  if  we  could  have  traced  this 
matter  any  further;  had  the  cousins  intermarried, 
a  six -fingered  variety  of  the  human  race  might 
have  been  set  up. 

To  show  you  that  this  supposition  is  by  no  means 
an  unreasonable  one,  let  me  now  point  out  what 
took  place  in  the  case  of  Seth  Wright's  sheep, 
where  it  happened  to  be  a  matter  of  moment  to 
him  to  obtain  a  breed  or  raise  a  flock  of  sheep  like 
that  accidental  variety  that  I  have  described — and 
I  will  tell  you  why.  In  that  part  of  Massachusetts 
where  Seth  Wright  was  living,  the  fields  were 
separated  by  fences,  and  the  sheep,  which  were 
very  active  and  robust,  would  roam  abroad,  and 
without  much  difficulty  jump  over  these  fences  in- 
to other  people's  farms.  As  a  matter  of  course, 
this  exuberant  activity  on  the  part  of  the  sheep 
constantly  gave  rise  to  all  sorts  of  quarrels,  bicker- 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    409 

ings,  and  contentions  among  the  farmers  of  the 
neighbourhood ;  so  it  occurred  to  Seth  Wright, 
who  was,  like  his  successors,  more  or  less  'cute,  that 
if  he  could  get  a  stock  of  sheep  like  those  with  the 
bandy  legs,  they  would  not  be  able  to  jump  over 
the  fences  so  readily ;  and  he  acted  upon  that  idea. 
He  killed  his  old  ram,  and  as  soon  as  the  young 
one  arrived  at  maturity,  he  bred  altogether  from 
it.  The  result  was  even  more  striking  than  in  the 
human  experiment  which  I  mentioned  just  now. 
Colonel  Humphreys  testifies  that  it  always  hap- 
pened that  the  offspring  were  either  pure  Ancons 
or  pure  ordinary  sheep ;  that  in  no  case  was  there 
any  mixing  of  the  Ancons  with  the  others.  In 
consequence  of  this,  in  the  course  of  a  very  few 
years,  the  farmer  was  able  to  get  a  very  consider- 
able flock  of  this  variety,  and  a  large  number  of 
them  were  spread  throughout  Massachusetts.  Most 
unfortunately,  however — I  suppose  it  was  because 
they  were  so  common — nobody  took  enough  notice 
of  them  to  preserve  their  skeletons  ;  and  although 
Colonel  Humphreys  states  that  he  sent  a  skeleton 
to  the  President  of  the  Royal  Society  at  the  same 
time  that  he  forwarded  his  paper,  I  am  afraid 
that  the  variety  has  entirely  disappeared ;  for  a 
short  time  after  these  sheep  had  become  prevalent 
in  that  district,  the  Merino  sheep  were  introduced  ; 
and  as  their  wool  was  much  more  valuable,  and  as 
they  were  a  quiet  race  of  sheep,  and  showed  no 
tendency  to  trespass  or  jump  over  fences,  the  Otter 


410  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE 


XI 


breed  of  sheep,  the  wool  of  which  was  inferior  to 
that  of  the  Merino,  was  gradually  allowed  to 
die  out. 

You  see  that  these  facts  illustrate  perfectly  well 
what  may  be  done  if  you  take  care  to  breed  from 
stocks  that  are  similar  to  each  other.  After  having 
got  a  variation,  if,  by  crossing  a  variation  with  the 
original  stock,  you  multiply  that  variation,  and  then 
take  care  to  keep  that  variation  distinct  from  the 
original  stock,  and  make  them  breed  together, — 
then  you  may  almost  certainly  produce  a  race  whose 
tendency  to  continue  the  variation  is  exceedingly 
strong. 

This  is  what  is  called  "  selection  "  ;  and  it  is  by 
exactly  the  same  process  as  that  by  which  Seth 
Wright  bred  his  Ancon  sheep,  that  our  breeds  of 
cattle,  dogs,  and  fowls  are  obtained.  There  are 
some  possibilities  of  exception,  but  still,  speaking 
broadly,  I  may  say  that  this  is  the  way  in  which 
all  our  varied  races  of  domestic  animals  have  arisen ; 
and  you  must  understand  that  it  is  not  one 
peculiarity  or  one  characteristic  alone  in  which 
anhmls  may  vary.  There  is  not  a  single  peculiarity 
or  characteristic  of  any  kind,  bodily  or  mental,  in 
which  offspring  may  not  vary  to  a  certain  extent 
from  the  parent  and  other  animals. 

Among  ourselves  this  is  well  known  The  sim- 
plest physical  peculiarity  is  mostly  reproduced,  I 
know  a  case  of  a  woman  who  has  the  lobe  of  one 
of  her  ears  a  little  flattened.  An  ordinary  obser- 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          411 

ver  might  scarcely  notice  it,  and  yet  every  one  of 
her  children  has  an  approximation  to  the  same 
peculiarity  to  some  extent.  If  you  look  at  the 
other  extreme,  too,  the  gravest  diseases,  such  as 
gout,  scrofula,  and  consumption,  may  be  handed 
down  with  just  the  same  certainty  and  persistence 
as  we  noticed  in  the  perpetuation  of  the  bandy 
legs  of  the  Ancon  sheep. 

However,  these  facts  are  best  illustrated  in 
animals,  and  the  extent  of  the  variation,  as  is  well 
known,  is  very  remarkable  in  dogs.  For  example, 
there  are  some  dogs  very  much  smaller  than  others ; 
indeed,  the  variation  is  so  enormous  that  probably 
the  smallest  dog  would  be  about  the  size  of  the 
head  of  the  largest ;  there  are  very  great  variations 
in  the  structural  forms  not  only  of  the  skeleton 
but  also  in  the  shape  of  the  skull,  and  in  the  pro- 
portions of  the  face  and  the  disposition  of  the  teeth. 

The  Pointer,  the  Retriever,  Bulldog,  and  the 
Terrier  differ  very  greatly,  and  yet  there  is  every 
reason  to  believe  that  every  one  of  these  races 
has  arisen  from  the  same  source, — that  all  the 
most  important  races  have  arisen  by  this  selective 
breeding  from  accidental  variation. 

A  still  more  striking  case  of  what  may  be  done 
by  selective  breeding,  and  it  is  a  better  case,  be- 
cause there  is  no  chance  of  that  partial  infusion  of 
error  to  which  I  alluded,  has  been  studied  very 
carefully  by  Mr.  Darwin, — the  case  of  the  domestic 
pigeons.  I  dare  say  there  may  be  some  among  you 


412  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

who  may  be  pigeon  fanciers,  and  I  wish  you  to 
understand  that  in  approaching  the  subject, I  would 
speak  with  all  humility  and  hesitation,  as  I  regret 
to  say  that  I  am  not  a  pigeon  fancier.  I  know  it 
is  a  great  art  and  mystery,  and  a  thing  upon  which 
a  man  must  not  speak  lightly  ;  but  I  shall  en- 
deavour, as  far  as  my  understanding  goes,  to  give 
you  a  summary  of  the  published  and  unpublished 
information  which  I  have  gained  from  Mr.  Darwin. 
Among  the  enormous  variety, — I  believe  there 
are  somewhere  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  kinds  of 
pigeons, — there  are  four  kinds  which  may  be  se- 
lected as  representing  the  extremest  divergences 
of  one  kind  from  another.  Their  names  are  the 
Carrier,  the  Pouter,  the  Fantail,  and  the  Tumbler. 
In  these  large  diagrams  that  I  have  here  they  are 
each  represented  in  their  relative  sizes  to  each 
other.  This  first  one  is  the  Carrier;  you  will 
notice  this  large  excrescence  on  its  beak  ;  it  has  a 
comparatively  small  head ;  there  is  a  bare  space 
round  the  eyes ;  it  has  a  long  neck,  a  very  long 
beak,  very  strong  legs,  large  feet,  long  wings,  and 
so  on.  The  second  one  is  the  Pouter,  a  very  large 
bird,  with  very  long  legs  and  beak.  It  is  called 
the  Pouter  because  it  is  in  the  habit  of  causing  its 
gullet  to  swell  up  by  inflating  it  with  air.  I  should 
tell  you  that  all  pigeons  have  a  tendency  to  do  this 
at  times,  but  in  the  Pouter  it  is  carried  to  an 
enormous  extent.  The  birds  appear  to  be  quite 
proud  of  their  power  of  swelling  and  puffing  them- 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          413 

selves  out  in  this  way  ;  and  I  think  it  is  about  as 
droll  a  sight  as  you  can  well  see  to  look  at  a  cage 
full  of  these  pigeons  puffing  and  blowing  them- 
selves out  in  this  ridiculous  manner. 

This  diagram  is  a  representation  of  the  third 
kind  I  mentioned — the  Fantail.  It  is,  you  see,  a 
small  bird,  with  exceedingly  small  legs  and  a  very 
small  beak.  It  is  most  curiously  distinguished  by 
the  size  and  extent  of  its  tail,  which,  instead  of 
containing  twelve  feathers,  may  have  many  more, 
— say  thirty,  or  even  more — I  believe  there  are 
some  with  as  many  as  forty-two.  This  bird  has  a 
curious  habit  of  spreading  out  the  feathers  of  its 
tail  in  such  a  way  that  they  reach  forward  and 
touch  its  head ;  and  if  this  can  be  accomplished,  I 
believe  it  is  looked  upon  as  a  point  of  great  beauty. 

But  here  is  the  last  great  variety, — the  Tumbler; 
and  of  that  great  variety,  one  of  the  principal 
kinds,  and  one  most  prized,  is  the  specimen  repre- 
sented here — the  short-faced  Tumbler.  Its  beak, 
you  see,  is  reduced  to  a  mere  nothing.  Just  com- 
pare the  beak  of  this  one  and  that  of  the  first  one, 
the  Carrier — I  believe  the  orthodox  comparison  of 
the  head  and  beak  of  a  thoroughly  well-bred  Tum- 
bler is  to  stick  an  oat  into  a  cherry,  and  that  will 
give  you  the  proper  relative  proportions  of  the 
beak  and  head.  The  feet  and  legs  are  exceedingly 
small,  and  the  bird  appears  to  be  quite  a  dwarf 
when  placed  side  by  side  with  this  great  Carrier. 

These  are  differences  enough  in  regard  to  their 


v 

414  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

external  appearance ;  but  these  differences  are  by 
no  means  the  whole  or  even  the  most  important  of 
the  differences  which  obtain  between  these  birds. 
There  is  hardly  a  single  point  of  their  structure 
which  has  not  become  more  or  less  altered  ;  and  to 
give  you  an  idea  of  how  extensive  these  alterations 
are,  I  have  here  some  very  good  skeletons,  for  which 
I  am  indebted  to  my  friend,  Mr.  Tegetmeier,  a 
great  authority  in  these  matters ;  by  means  of 
which,  if  you  examine  them  by  and  by,  you  will 
be  able  to  see  the  enormous  difference  in  their 
bony  structures. 

I  had  the  privilege,  some  time  ago,  of  access  to 
some  important  MSS.  of  Mr.  Darwin,  who,  I  may 
tell  you,  has  taken  very  great  pains  and  spent 
much  valuable  time  and  attention  on  the  investi- 
gation of  these  variations,  and  getting  together  all 
the  facts  that  bear  upon  them.  I  obtained  from 
these  MSS.  the  following  summary  of  the  differ- 
ences between  the  domestic  breeds  of  pigeons ; 
that  is  to  say,  a  notification  of  the  various  points 
in  which  their  organisation  differs.  In  the  first 
place,  the  back  of  the  skull  may  differ  a  good  deal, 
and  the  development  of  the  bones  of  the  face  may 
vary  a  great  deal ;  the  back  varies  a  good  deal ; 
the  shape  of  the  lower  jaw  varies ;  the  tongue 
varies  very  greatly,  not  only  in  correlation  to  the 
length  and  size  of  the  beak,  but  it  seems  also  to 
have  a  kind  of  independent  variation  of  its  own. 
Then  the  amount  of  naked  skin  round  the  eyes. 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    415 

and  at  the  base  of  the  beak,  may  vary  enormously  ; 
so  may  the  length  of  the  eyelids,  the  shape  of  the 
nostrils,  and  the  length  of  the  neck.  I  have  al- 
ready noticed  the  habit  of  blowing  out  the  gullet, 
so  remarkable  in  the  Pouter,  and  comparatively  so 
in  the  others.  There  are  great  differences,  too,  in 
the  size  of  the  female  and  the  male,  the  shape  of 
the  body,  the  number  and  width  of  the  processes 
of  the  ribs,  the  development  of  the  ribs,  and  the 
size,  shape,  and  development  of  the  breastbone. 
We  may  notice,  too — and  I  mention  the  fact  be- 
cause it  has  been  disputed  by  what  is  assumed  to 
be  high  authority, — the  variation  in  the  number 
of  the  sacral  vertebrae.  The  number  of  these 
varies  from  eleven  to  fourteen,  and  that  without 
any  diminution  in  the  number  of  the  vertebrae  of 
the  back  or  of  the  tail.  Then  the  number  and 
position  of  the  tail-feathers  may  vary  enormously, 
and  so  may  the  number  of  the  primary  and  second- 
ary feathers  of  the  wings.  Again,  the  length  of 
the  feet  and  of  the  beak, — although  they  have  no 
relation  to  each  other,  yet  appear  to  go  together, — 
that  is,  you  have  a  long  beak  wherever  you  have 
long  feet.  There  are  differences  also  in  the 
periods  of  the  acquirement  of  the  perfect  plum- 
age— the  size  and  shape  of  the  eggs — the  nature 
of  flight,  and  the  powers  of  flight — so-called 
'•'  hominy  "  birds  having  enormous  flying  powers ; l 

1  The  "Cnrrirr,"  I  learn   from  Mr.  Tegetmeier,   does  not 
carry ;  a  high-bred  bird  of  this  breed  being  but  a  poor  flier. 


416          PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE  xi 

while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  little  Tumbler  is  so 
called  because  of  its  extraordinary  faculty  of  turn- 
ing head  over  heels  in  the  air,  instead  of  pursuing 
a  direct  course.  And,  lastly,  the  dispositions  and 
voices  of  the  birds  may  vary.  Thus  the  case  of 
the  pigeons  shows  you  that  there  is  hardly  a 
single  particular — whether  of  instinct,  or  habit, 
or  bony  structure,  or  of  plumage — of  either  the 
internal  economy  or  the  external  shape,  in  which 
some  variation  or  change  may  not  take  place, 
which,  by  selective  breeding,  may  become  perpetu- 
ated, and  form  the  foundation  of,  and  give  rise  to, 
a  new  race. 

If  you  carry  in  your  mind's  eye  these  four 
varieties  of  pigeons,  you  will  bear  with  you  as 
good  a  notion  as  you  can  have,  perhaps,  of  the 
enormous  extent  to  which  a  deviation  from  a 
primitive  type  may  be  carried  by  means  of  this 
process  of  selective  breeding. 

The  birds  which  fly  long  distances,  and  come  home — "homing  " 
birds — and  are  consequently  used  as  earners,  are  not  ' '  carriers  " 
in  the  fancy  sense. 


THE    CONDITIONS    OF    EXISTENCE    AS  AFFECTING 
THE   PERPETUATION   OF   LIVING  BEINGS. 

IN  the  last  Lecture  I  endeavoured  to  prove  to 
you  that,  while,  as  a  general  rule,  organic  beings 
tend  to  reproduce  their  kind,  there  is  in  them, 
also,  a  constantly  recurring  tendency  to  vary — to 
vary  to  a  greater  or  to  a  less  extent.  Such  a 
variety,  I  pointed  out  to  you,  might  arise  from 
causes  which  we  do  not  understand ;  we  there- 
fore called  it  spontaneous ;  and  it  might  come 
into  existence  as  a  definite  and  marked  thing, 
without  any  gradations  between  itself  and  the 
form  which  preceded  it.  I  further  pointed  out, 
that  such  a  variety  having  once  arisen,  might  be 
perpetuated  to  some  extent,  and  indeed  to  a  very 
marked  extent,  without  any  direct  interference,  or 
without  any  exercise  of  that  process  which  we 
called  selection.  And  then  I  stated  further,  that 
by  such  selection,  when  exercised  artificially — if 
you  took  care  to  breed  only  from  those  forms 
which  presented  the  same  peculiarities  of  any 


418  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

variety  which  had  arisen  in  this  manner — the 
variation  might  be  perpetuated,  as  far  as  we  can 
see,  indefinitely. 

The  next  question,  and  it  is  an  important  one 
for  us,  is  this :  Is  there  any  limit  to  the  amount 
of  variation  from  the  primitive  stock  which  can 
be  produced  by  this  process  of  selective  breeding  ? 
In  considering  this  question,  it  will  be  useful  to 
class  the  characteristics,  in  respect  of  which 
organic  beings  vary,  under  two  heads  :  we  may 
consider  structural  characteristics,  and  we  may 
consider  physiological  characteristics. 

In  the  first  place,  as  regards  structural  charac- 
teristics, I  endeavoured  to  show  you,  by  the 
skeletons  which  I  had  upon  the  table,  and  by 
reference  to  a  great  many  well-ascertained  facts, 
that  the  different  breeds  of  Pigeons,  the  Carriers, 
Pouters,  and  Tumblers,  might  vary  in  any  of  their 
internal  and  important  structural  characters  to  a 
very  great  degree ;  not  only  might  there  be  changes 
in  the  proportions  of  the  skull,  and  the  characters 
of  the  feet  and  beaks,  and  so  on ;  but  that  there 
might  be  an  absolute  difference  in  the  number  of 
the  vertebra  of  the  back,  as  in  the  sacral  vertebras 
of  the  Pouter ;  and  so  great  is  the  extent  of  the 
variation  in  these  and  similar  characters  that  I 
pointed  out  to  you,  by  reference  to  the  skeletons 
and  the  diagrams,  that  these  extreme  varieties 
may  absolutely  differ  more  from  one  another  in 
their  structural  characters  than  do  what  naturalists 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    419 

call  distinct  SPECIES  of  pigeons  ;  that  is  to  say, 
that  they  differ  so  much  in  structure  that  there  is 
a  greater  difference  between  the  Pouter  and  the 
Tumbler  than  there  is  between  such  wild  and  dis- 
tinct forms  as  the  Rock  Pigeon  or  the  Ring  Pigeon, 
or  the  Ring  Pigeon  and  the  Stock  Dove ;  and 
indeed  the  differences  are  of  greater  value  than 
this,  for  the  structural  differences  between  these 
domesticated  pigeons  are  such  as  would  be  ad- 
mitted by  a  naturalist,  supposing  he  knew  nothing 
at  all  about  their  origin,  to  entitle  them  to  con- 
stitute even  distinct  genera. 

As  I  have  used  this  term  SPECIES,  and  shall  prob- 
ably use  it  a  good  deal,  I  had  betterperhaps  devote 
a  word  or  two  to  explaining  what  I  mean  by  it. 

Animals  and  plants  are  divided  into  groups, 
which  become  gradually  smaller,  beginning  with 
a  KINGDOM,  which  is  divided  into  SUB-KINGDOMS  ; 
then  come  the  smaller  divisions  called  PROVINCES  ; 
and  so  on  from  a  PROVINCE  to  a  CLASS,  from  a 
CLASS  to  an  ORDER,  from  ORDERS  to  FAMILIES, 
and  from  these  to  GENERA,  until  we  come  at 
length  to  the  smallest  groups  of  animals  which 
can  be  denned  one  from  the  other  by  constant 
characters,  which  are  not  sexual ;  and  these  are 
what  naturalists  call  SPECIES  in  practice,  whatever 
they  may  do  in  theory. 

If,  in  a  state  of  nature,  you  find  any  two  groups 
of  living  beings,  which  are  separated  one  from  the 
other  by  some  constantly-recurring  characteristic, 


420  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

I  don't  care  how  slight  and  trivial,  so  long  as  it  is 
defined  and  constant,  and  does  not  depend  on 
sexual  peculiarities,  then  all  naturalists  agree  in 
calling  them  two  species ;  that  is  what  is  meant 
by  the  use  of  the  word  species — that  is  to  say,  it 
is,  for  the  practical  naturalist,  a  mere  question  of 
structural  differences.1 

We  have  seen  now — to  repeat  this  point  once 
more,  and  it  is  very  essential  that  we  should 
rightly  understand  it — we  have  seen  that  breeds, 
known  to  have  been  derived  from  a  common  stock 
by  selection,  may  be  as  different  in  their  structure 
from  the  original  stock  as  species  may  be  distinct 
from  each  other. 

But  is  the  like  true  of  the  physiological  charac- 
teristics of  animals  ?  Do  the  physiological  differ- 
ences of  varieties  amount  in  degree  to  those 
observed  between  forms  which  naturalists  call 
distinct  species  ?  This  is  a  most  important  point 
for  us  to  consider. 

As  regards  the  great  majority  of  physiological 
characteristics,  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  are 
capable  of  being  developed,  increased,  and  modi- 
fied by  selection. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  breeds  may  be  made  as 
different  as  species  in  many  physiological  charac- 
ters. I  have  already  pointed  out  to  you  very 

1  I  lay  stress  here  on  the  practical  signification  of  "  Species." 
Whether  a  physiological  test  between  species  exist  or  not,  it  is 
hardly  ever  applicable  by  the  practical  naturalist. 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC   NATURE          421 

briefly  the  different  habits  of  the  breeds  of 
Pigeons,  all  of  which  depend  upon  their  physio- 
logical peculiarities — as  the  peculiar  habit  of 
tumbling,  in  the  Tumbler — the  peculiarities  of 
flight,  in  the  "  homing  "  birds— the  strange  habit 
of  spreading  out  the  tail,  and  walking  in  a  peculiar 
fashion,  in  the  Fantail — and,  lastly,  the  habit  of 
blowing  out  the  gullet,  so  characteristic  of  the 
Pouter.  These  are  all  due  to  physiological  modifi- 
cations, and  in  all  these  respects  these  birds  differ 
as  much  from  each  other  as  any  two  ordinary 
species  do. 

So  with  Dogs  in  their  habits  and  instincts.  It 
is  a  physiological  peculiarity  which  leads  the 
Greyhound  to  chase  its  prey  by  sight — that  enables 
the  Beagle  to  track  it  by  the  scent — that  impels 
the  Terrier  to  its  rat-hunting  propensity — and 
that  leads  the  Retriever  to  its  habit  of  retrieving. 
These  habits  and  instincts  are  all  the  results  of 
physiological  differences  and  peculiarities,  which 
have  been  developed  from  a  common  stock,  at 
least  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  so.  But  it 
is  a  most  singular  circumstance,  that  while  you 
may  run  through  almost  the  whole  series  of 
physiological  processes,  without  finding  a  check  to 
your  argument,  you  come  at  last  to  a  point  where 
you  do  find  a  check,  and  that  is  in  the  reproduc- 
tive processes.  For  there  is  a  most  singular  cir- 
cumstance in  respect  to  natural  species — at  least 
about  some  of  them — and  it  would  be  sufficient 


422  THE  CAUSES  OF   THE  XI 

for  the  purposes  of  this  argument  if  it  were  true 
of  only  one  of  them,  but  there  is,  in  fact,  a  great 
number  of  such  cases — and  that  is,  that,  similar 
as  they  may  appear  to  be  to  mere  races  or  breeds, 
they  present  a  marked  peculiarity  in  the  repro- 
ductive process.  If  you  breed  from  the  male  and 
female  of  the  same  race,  you  of  course  have  off- 
spring of  the  like  kind,  and  if  you  make  the  off- 
spring breed  together,  you  obtain  the  same  result, 
and  if  you  breed  from  these  again,  you  will  still 
have  the  same  kind  of  offspring;  there  is  no 
check.  But  if  you  take  members  of  two  distinct 
species,  however  similar  they  may  be  to  each  other, 
and  make  them  breed  together,  -you  will  find  a 
check,  with  some  modifications  and  exceptions, 
however,  which  I  shall  speak  of  presently.  If 
you  cross  two  such  species  with  each  other,  then 
— although  you  may  get  offspring  in  the  case  of 
the  first  cross,  yet,  if  you  attempt  to  breed  from 
the  products  of  that  crossing,  which  are  what  are 
called  HYBRIDS — that  is,  if  you  couple  a  male 
and  a  female  hybrid — then  the  result  is  that  in 
ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred  you  will 
get  no  offspring  at  all ;  there  will  be  no  result 
whatsoever. 

The  reason  of  this  is  quite  obvious  in  some 
cases ;  the  male  hybrids,  although  possessing  all 
the  external  appearances  and  characteristics  of 
perfect  animals,  are  physiologically  imperfect  and 
deficient  in  the  structural  parts  of  the  reproductive 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          423 

elements  necessary  to  generation.  It  is  said  to 
be  invariably  the  case  with  the  male  mule,  the 
cross  between  the  Ass  and  the  Mare ;  and  hence 
it  is,  that,  although  crossing  the  Horse  with  the 
Ass  is  easy  enough,  and  is  constantly  done,  as  far 
as  I  am  aware,  if  you  take  two  mules,  a  male  and 
a  female,  and  endeavour  to  breed  from  them,  you 
get  no  offspring  whatever ;  no  generation  will  take 
place.  This  is  what  is  called  the  sterility  of  the 
hybrids  between  two  distinct  species. 

You  see  that  this  is  a  very  extraordinary  cir-    j 
cumstance ;   one  does  not  see  why  it  should  be.  MTO 
The  common  teleological  explanation  is,  that  it  is 
to  prevent  the  impurity  of  the  blood  resulting  D{J^- 
from  the  crossing  of  one  species  with  another,  but  '  j 
you  see  it  does  not  in  reality  do  anything  of  the 
kind.     There  is  nothing  in  this  fact  that  hybrids 
cannot  breed  with  each  other,  to  establish  such  a 
theory ;  there  is  nothing  to  prevent   the  Horse 
breeding  with  the  Ass,  or  the  Ass  with  the  Horse. 
So  that  this  explanation  breaks  down,  as  a  great 
many  explanations  of  this  kind  do,  that  are  only 
founded  on  mere  assumptions. 

Thus  you  see  that  there  is  a  great  difference 
between  "mongrels,"  which  are  crosses  between 
distinct  races,  and  "hybrids,"  which  are  crosses 
between  distinct  species.  The  mongrels  are,  so 
far  as  we  know,  fertile  with  one  another.  But 
between  species,  in  many  cases,  you  cannot  suc- 
ceed in  obtaining  even  the  first  cross  ;  at  any  rate 

66 


424  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

it  is  quite  certain  that  the  hybrids  are  often  abso- 
lutely infertile  one  with  another. 

Here  is  a  feature,  then,  great  or  small  as  it  may 
be,  which  distinguishes  natural  species  of  animals. 
Can  we  find  any  approximation  to  this  in  the 
different  races  known  to  be  produced  by  selective 
breeding  from  a  common  stock  ?  Up  to  the 
present  time  the  answer  to  that  question  is  abso- 
lutely a  negative  one.  As  far  as  we  know  at 
present,  there  is  nothing  approximating  to  this 
check.  In  crossing  the  breeds  between  the  Fan- 
tail  and  the  Pouter,  the  Carrier  and  the  Tumbler, 
or  any  other  variety  or  race  you  may  name — so  far 
as  we  know  at  present — there  is  no  difficulty  in 
breeding  together  the  mongrels.  Take  the  Carrier 
and  the  Fantail,  for  instance,  and  let  them  repre- 
sent the  Horse  and  the  Ass  in  the  case  of  distinct 
species ;  then  you  have,  as  the  result  of  their  breed- 
ing, the  Carrier-Fan  tail  mongrel, — we  will  say  the 
male  and  female  mongrel, — and,  as  far  as  we  know, 
these  two  when  crossed  would  not  be  less  fertile 
than  the  original  cross,  or  than  Carrier  with  Car- 
rier. Here,  you  see,  is  a  physiological  contrast 
between  the  races  produced  by  selective  modifica- 
tion and  natural  species.  I  shall  inquire  into  the 
value  of  this  fact,  and  of  some  modifying  circum- 
stances by  and  by ;  for  the  present  I  merely  put 
it  broadly  before  you. 

But  while  considering  this  question  of  the  limi- 
tations of  species,  a  word  must  be  said  about  what 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    425 

is  called  RECURRENCE — tne  tendency  of  races 
which  have  been  developed  by  selective  breeding 
from  varieties  to  return  to  their  primitive  type. 
This  is  supposed  by  many  to  put  an  absolute  limit 
to  the  extent  of  selective  and  all  other  variations. 
People  say,  "  It  is  all  very  well  to  talk  about  pro- 
ducing these  different  races,  but  you  know  very 
well  that  if  you  turned  all  these  birds  wild,  these 
Pouters,  and  Carriers,  and  so  on,  they  would  all  re- 
turn to  their  primitive  stock."  This  is  very  com- 
monly assumed  to  be  a  fact,  and  it  is  an  argument 
that  is  commonly  brought  forward  as  conclusive ; 
but  if  you  will  take  the  trouble  to  inquire  into  it 
rather  closely,  I  think  you  will  find  that  it  is  not 
worth  very  much.  The  first  question  of  course  is, 
Do  they  thus  return  to  the  primitive  stock  ?  And 
commonly  as  the  thing  is  assumed  and  accepted, 
it  is  extremely  difficult  to  get  anything  like  good 
evidence  of  it.  It  is  constantly  said,  for  example, 
that  if  domesticated  Horses  are  turned  wild,  as 
they  have  been  in  some  parts  of  Asia  Minor  and 
South  America,  that  they  return  at  once  to  the 
primitive  stock  from  which  they  were  bred.  But 
the  first  answer  that  you  make  to  this  assumption 
is,  to  ask  who  knows  what  the  primitive  stock 
was ;  and  the  second  answer  is,  that  in  that  case 
the  wild  Horses  of  Asia  Minor  ought  to  be  exactly 
like  the  wild  Horses  of  South  America.  If  they 
are  both  like  the  same  thing,  they  ought  mani- 
festly to  be  like  each  other  !  The  best  authorities, 


426  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

however,  tell  you  that  it  is  quite  different.  The 
wild  Horse  of  Asia  is  said  to  be  of  a  dun  colour, 
with  a  largish  head,  and  a  great  many  other  pe- 
culiarities ;  while  the  best  authorities  on  the  wild 
Horses  of  South  America  tell  you  that  there  is  no 
similarity  between  their  wild  Horses  and  those  of 
Asia  Minor;  the  cut  of  their  heads  is  very  differ- 
ent, and  they  are  commonly  chestnut  or  bay- 
coloured.  It  is  quite  clear,  therefore,  that  as  by 
these  facts  there  ought  to  have  been  two  primitive 
stocks,  they  go  for  nothing  in  support  of  the  as- 
sumption that  races  recur  to  one  primitive  stock, 
and  so  far  as  this  evidence  is  concerned,  it  falls  to 
the  ground. 

Suppose  for  a  moment  that  it  were  so,  and 
that  domesticated  races,  when  turned  wild,  did 
return  to  some  common  condition,  I  cannot  see 
that  this  would  prove  much  more  than  that  simi- 
lar conditions  are  likely  to  produce  similar  results ; 
and  that  when  you  take  back  domesticated  ani- 
mals into  what  we  call  natural  conditions,  you  do 
exactly  the  same  thing  as  if  you  carefully  undid 
all  the  work  you  had  gone  through,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  bringing  the  animal  from  its  wild  to  its 
domesticated  state.  I  do  not  see  anything  very 
wonderful  in  the  fact,  if  it  took  all  that  trouble  to 
g'et  it  from  a  wild  state,  that  it  should  go  back  in- 
to its  original  state  as  soon  as  you  removed  the 
conditions  which  produced  the  variation  to  the 
domesticated  form.  There  is  an  important  fact, 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    427 

however,  forcibly  brought  forward  by  Mr.  Darwin, 
which  has  been  noticed  in  connection  with  the  breed- 
ing of  domesticated  pigeons ;  and  it  is,  that  how- 
ever different  these  breeds  of  pigeons  may  be  from 
each  other,  and  we  have  already  noticed  the  great 
differences  in  these  breeds,  that  if,  among  any  of 
those  variations,  you  chance  to  have  a  blue  pigeon 
turn  up,  it  will  be  sure  to  have  the  black  bars 
across  the  wings,  which  are  characteristic  of  the 
original  wild  stock,  the  Rock  Pigeon. 

Now,  this  is  certainly  a  very  remarkable  cir- 
cumstance ;  but  I  do  not  see  myself  how  it  tells 
very  strongly  either  one  way  or  the  other.  I 
think,  in  fact,  that  this  argument  in  favour  of  re- 
currence to  the  primitive  type  might  prove  a  great 
deal  too  much  for  those  who  so  constant!}'  bring  it 
forward.  For  example,  Mr.  Darwin  has  very  for- 
cibly urged,  that  nothing  is  commoner  than  if  you 
examine  a  dun  horse — and  I  had  an  opportunity 
of  verifying  this  illustration  lately  while  in  the 
islands  of  the  West  Highlands,  where  there  are  a 
great  many  dun  horses — to  find  that  horse  exhibit 
a  long  black  stripe  down  his  back,  very  often 
stripes  on  his  shoulder,  and  very  often  stripes  on 
his  legs.  I,  myself,  saw  a  pony  of  this  description 
a  short  time  ago,  in  a  baker's  cart,  near  Rothesay, 
in  Bute :  it  had  the  long  stripe  down  the  back, 
and  stripes  on  the  shoulders  and  legs,  just  like 
those  of  the  Ass,  the  Quagga,  'and  the  Zebra. 
Now,  if  we  interpret  the  theory  of  recurrence  as 


428  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

applied  to  this  case,  might  it  not  be  said  that  here 
was  a  case  of  a  variation  exhibiting  the  characters 
and  conditions  of  an  animal  occupying  something 
like  an  intermediate  position  between  the  Horse, 
the  Ass,  the  Quagga,  and  the  Zebra,  and  from 
which  these  had  been  developed  ?  In  the  same 
way  with  regard  even  to  Man.  Every  anatomist 
will  tell  you  that  there  is  nothing  commoner,  in 
dissecting  the  human  body,  than  to  meet  with 
what  are  called  muscular  variations — that  is,  if 
you  dissect  two  bodies  very  carefully,  you  will  prob- 
ably find  that  the  modes  of  attachment  and  in- 
sertion of  the  muscles  are  not  exactly  the  same  in 
both,  there  being  great  peculiarities  in  the  mode 
in  which  the  muscles  are  arranged ;  and  it  is  very 
singular,  that  in  some  dissections  of  the  human 
body  you  will  come  upon  arrangements  of  the 
muscles  very  similar  indeed  to  the  same  parts 
in  the  Apes.  Is  the  conclusion  in  that  case 
to  be,  that  this  is  like  the  black  bars  in  the  case 
of  the  Pigeon,  and  that  it  indicates  a  recurrence 
to  the  primitive  type  from  which  the  animals 
have  been  probably  developed  ?  Truly,  I  think 
that  the  opponents  of  modification  and  variation 
had  better  leave  the  argument  of  recurrence 
alone,  or  it  may  prove  altogether  too  strong  for 
them. 

To  sum  up, — the  evidence  as  far  as  we  have 
gone  is  against  the  argument  as  to  any  limit  to 
divergences,  so  far  as  structure  is  concerned ;  and 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  OKGANIC  NATURE    429 

in  favour  of  a  physiological  limitation.  By  selec- 
tive breeding  we  can  produce  structural  diver- 
gences as  grea.t  as  those  of  species,  but  we  cannot 
produce  equal  physiological  divergences.  For  the 
present  I  leave  the  question  there. 

Now,  the  next  problem  th^t  lies  before  us — and 
it  is  an  extremely  important  one — is  this :  Does 
this  selective  breeding  occur  in  nature  ?  Because, 
if  there  is  no  proof  of  it,  all  that  I  have  been  tell- 
ing you  goes  for  nothing  in  accounting  for  the 
origin  of  species.  Are  natural  causes  competent 
to  play  the  part  of  selection  in  perpetuating 
varieties  ?  Here  we  labour  under  very  great 
difficulties.  In  the  last  lecture  I  had  occasion  to 
point  out  to  you  the  extreme  difficulty  of  obtain- 
ing evidence  even  of  the  first  origin  of  those 
varieties  which  we  know  to  have  occurred  in 
domesticated  animals.  I  told  you,  that  almost  al- 
ways the  origin  of  these  varieties  is  overlooked,  so 
that  I  could  only  produce  two  or  three  cases,  as 
that  of  Gratio  Kelleia  and  of  the  Ancon  sheep. 
People  forget,  or  do  not  take  notice  of  them  until 
they  come  to  have  a  prominence ;  and  if  that  is 
true  of  artificial  cases,  under  our  own  eyes,  and  in 
animals  in  our  own  care,  how  much  more  difficult 
it  must  be  to  have  at  first  hand  good  evidence  of 
the  origin  of  varieties  in  nature !  Indeed,  I  do 
not  know  that  it  is  possible  by  direct  evidence  to 
prove  the  origin  of  a  variety  in  nature,  or  to  prove 
selective  breeding ;  but  I  will  tell  you  what  we 


430  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

can  prove — and  this  comes  to  the  same  thing — 
that  varieties  exist  in  nature  within  the  limits  of 
species,  and,  what  is  more,  that  when  a  variety  has 
come  into  existence  in  nature,  there  are  natural 
causes  and  conditions,  which  are  amply  competent 
to  play  the  part  of  a  selective  breeder ;  and  al- 
though that  is  not  quite  the  evidence  that  one 
would  like  to  have — though  it  is  not  direct  testi- 
mony— yet  it  is  exceeding  good  and  exceedingly 
powerful  evidence  in  its  way. 

As  to  the  first  point,  of  varieties  existing 
among  natural  species,  I  might  appeal  to  the 
universal  experience  of  every  naturalist,  and  of 
any  person  who  has  ever  turned  any  attention 
at  all  to  the  characteristics  of  plants  and  animals 
in  a  state  of  nature;  but  I  may  as  well  take 
a  few  definite  cases,  and  I  will  begin  with  Man 
himself. 

I  am  one  of  those  who  believe  that,  at  present, 
there  is  no  evidence  whatever  for  saying,  that  man- 
kind sprang  originally  from  any  more  than  a  single 
pair ;  I  must  say,  that  I  cannot  see  any  good 
ground  whatever,  or  even  any  tenable  sort  of  evi- 
dence, for  believing  that  there  is  more  than  one 
species  of  Man.  Nevertheless,  as  you  know,  just 
as  there  are  numbers  of  varieties  in  animals,  so 
there  are  remarkable  varieties  of  men.  I  speak 
not  merely  of  those  broad  and  distinct  variations 
which  you  see  at  a  glance.  Everybody,  of  course, 
knows  the  difference  between  a  Negro  and  a  white 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE         431 

man,  and  can  tell  a  Chinaman  from  an  English- 
man. They  each  have  peculiar  characteristics  of 
colour  and  physiognomy;  but  you  must  recollect 
that  the  characters  of  these  races  go  very  far 
deeper — they  extend  to  the  bony  structure,  and  to 
the  characters  of  that  most  important  of  all  organs 
to  us — the  brain  ;  so  that,  among  men  belonging 
to  different  races,  or  even  within  the  same  race, 
one  man  shall  have  a  brain  a  third,  or  half,  or  even 
seventy  per  cent,  bigger  than  another  ;  and  if  you 
take  the  whole  range  of  human  brains,  you  will 
find  a  variation  in  some  cases  of  a  hundred  per 
cent.  Apart  from  these  variations  in  the  size  of 
the  brain,  the  characters  of  the  skull  vary.  Thus 
if  I  draw  the  figures  of  a  Mongol  and  of  a  Negro 
head  on  the  blackboard,  in  the  case  of  the  last  the 
breadth  would  be  about  seven-tenths,  and  in  the 
other  it  would  be  nine-tenths  of  the  total  length. 
So  that  you  see  there  is  abundant  evidence  of 
variation  among  men  in  their  natural  condition. 
And  if  you  turn  to  other  animals  there  is  just  the 
same  thing.  The  fox,  for  example,  which  has  a 
very  large  geographical  distribution  all  over 
Europe,  and  parts  of  Asia,  and  on  the  American 
Continent,  varies  greatly.  There  are  mostly  large 
foxes  in  the  North,  and  smaller  ones  in  the  South. 
In  Germany  alone  the  foresters  reckon  some  eight 
different  sorts. 

Of  the  tiger,  no  one  supposes  that  there  is  more 
than  one  species ;  they  extend  from  the  hottest 


432  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  XI 

parts  of  Bengal,  into  the  dry,  cold,  bitter  steppes 
of  Siberia,  into  a  latitude  of  50°, — so  that  they  may 
even  prey  upon  the  reindeer.  These  tigers  have 
exceedingly  different  characteristics,  but  still  they 
all  keep  their  general  features,  so  that  there  is  no 
doubt  as  to  their  being  tigers.  The  Siberian 
tiger  has  a  thick  fur,  a  small  mane,  and  a  longi- 
tudinal stripe  down  the  back,  while  the  tigers  of 
Java  and  Sumatra  differ  in  many  important  re- 
spects from  the  tigers  of  Northern  Asia.  So  lions 
vary  ;  so  birds  vary ;  and  so,  if  you  go  further  back 
and  lower  down  in  creation,  you  find  that  fishes 
vary.  In  different  streams,  in  the  same  country 
even,  you  will  find  the  trout  to  be  quite  different 
to  each  other  and  easily  recognisable  by  those  who 
fish  in  the  particular  streams.  There  is  the  same 
differences  in  leeches  ;  leech  collectors  can  easily 
point  out  to  you  the  differences  and  the  peculiari- 
ties which  you  yourself  would  probably  pass  by  ; 
so  with  fresh-water  mussels ;  so,  in  fact,  with  every 
animal  you  can  mention. 

In  plants  there  is  the  same  kind  of  variation. 
Take  such  a  case  even  as  the  common  bramble. 
The  botanists  are  all  at  war  about  it ;  some  of 
them  wanting  to  make  out  that  there  are  many 
species  of  it,  and  others  maintaining  that  they  are 
but  many  varieties  of  one  species  ;  and  they  can- 
not settle  to  this  day  which  is  a  species  and  which 
is  a  variety ! 

So  that  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatsoever  that 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    433 

any  plant  and  any  animal  may  vary  in  nature ; 
that  varieties  may  arise  in  the  way  I  have  described 
— as  spontaneous  varieties — and  that  those  varie- 
ties may  be  perpetuated  in  the  same  way  that  I 
have  shown  you  spontaneous  varieties  are  perpetu- 
ated ;  I  say,  therefore,  that  there  can  be  no  doubt 
as  to  the  origin  and  perpetuation  of  varieties  in 
nature. 

But  the  question  now  is  : — Does  selection  take 
place  in  nature  ?  Is  there  anything  like  the 
operation  of  man  in  exercising  selective  breeding, 
taking  place  in  nature  ?  You  will  observe  that, 
at  present,  I  say  nothing  about  species ;  I  wish  to 
confine  myself  to  the  consideration  of  the  pro- 
duction of  those  natural  races  which  everybody 
admits  to  exist.  The  question  is,  whether  in 
nature  there  are  causes  competent  to  produce 
races,  just  in  the  same  way  as  man  is  able  to  pro- 
duce by  selection,  such  races  of  animals  as  we 
have  already  noticed. 

When  a  variety  has  arisen,  the  CONDITIONS  OF 
EXISTENCE  are  such  as  to  exercise  an  influence 
which  is  exactly  comparable  to  that  of  artificial 
selection.  By  Conditions  of  Existence  I  mean 
two  things — there  are  conditions  which  are  fur- 
nished by  the  physical,  the  inorganic  world,  and 
there  are  conditions  of  existence  which  are  fur- 
nished by  the  organic  world.  There  is,  in  the  first 
place,  CLIMATE  ;  under  that  head  I  include  only 
temperature  and  the  varied  amount  of  moisture 


434  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

of  particular  places.  In  the  next  place  there  is 
what  is  technically  called  STATION,  which  means 
— given  the  climate,  the  particular  kind  of  place 
in  which  an  animal  or  a  plant  lives  or  grows  ;  for 
example,  the  station  of  a  fish  is  in  the  water,  of  a 
fresh-water  fish  in  fresh  water ;  the  station  of  a 
marine  fish  is  in  the  sea,  and  a  marine  animal 
may  have  a  station  higher  or  deeper.  So  again 
with  land  animals  :  the  differences  in  their  stations 
are  those  of  different  soils  and  neighbourhoods ; 
some  being  best  adapted  to  a  calcareous,  and 
others  to  an  arenaceous  soil.  The  third  condition 
of  existence  is  FoojD^by  which  I  mean  food  in 
the  broadest  sense,  the  supply  of  the  materials 
necessary  to  the  existence  of  an  organic  being ;  in 
the  case  of  a  plant  the  inorganic  matters,  such  as 
carbonic  acid,  water,  ammonia,  and  the  earthy 
salts  or  salines  ;  in  the  case  of  the  animal  the  in- 
organic and  organic  matters,  which  we  have  seen 
they  require  ;  then  these  are  all,  at  least  the  first 
two,  what  we  may  call  the  inorganic  or  physical 
conditions  of  existence.  Food  takes  a  mid-place, 
and  then  come  the  organic  conditions ;  by  which 
I  mean  the  conditions  which  depend  upon  the 
state  of  the  rest  of  the  organic  creation,  upon  the 
number  and  kind  of  living  beings,  with  which  an 
animal  is  surrounded.  You  may  class  these  under 
two  heads  :  there  are  organic  beings,  which  operate 
as  opponents,  and  there  are  organic  beings  which 
operate  as  helpers  to  any  given  organic  creature. 


Si  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE         435 

The  opponents  may  be  of  two  kinds  :  there  are 
the  indirect  opponents,  which  are  what  we  may 
call  rivals;  and  there  are  the  direct  opponents, 
those  which  strive  to  destroy  the  creature ;  and 
these  we  call  enemies.  By  rivals  I  mean,  of  course, 
in  the  case  of  plants,  those  which  require  for  their 
support  the  samp  kind  of  soil  and  station,  and, 
among  animals,  those  which  require  the  same  kind 
of  station,  or  food,  or  climate ;  those  are  the  in- 
direct opponents  ;  the  direct  opponents  are,  of 
course,  those  which  prey  upon  an  animal  or 
vegetable.  The  helpers  may  also  be  regarded  as 
direct  and  indirect :  in  the  case  of  a  carnivorous 
animal,  for  example,  a  particular  herbaceous  plant 
may,  in  multiplying,  be  an  indirect  helper,  by  en- 
abling the  herbivora  on  which  the  carnivore  preys 
to  get  more  food,  and  thus  to  nourish  the  carnivore 
more  abundantly  ;  the  direct  helper  may  be  best 
illustrated  by  reference  to  some  parasitic  creature, 
such  as  the  tape-worm.  The  tape-worm  exists  in 
the  human  intestines,  so  that  the  fewer  there  are 
of  men  the  fewer  there  will  be  of  tape-worms, 
other  things  being  alike.  It  is  a  humiliating  re- 
flection, perhaps,  that  we  may  be  classed  as  direct 
helpers  to  the  tape-worm,  but  the  fact  is  so  :  we 
can  all  see  that  if  there  were  no  men  there  would 
be  no  tape-worms. 

It  is  extremely  difficult  to  estimate,  in  a  proper 
way,  the  importance  and  the  working  of  the  Con- 
ditions of  Existence.  I  do  not  think  there  were 
any  of  us  who  had  the  remotest  notion  of  properly 


436  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

estimating  them  until  the  publication  of  Mr. 
Darwin's  work,  which  has  placed  them  before  us 
with  remarkable  clearness  ;  and  I  must  endeavour, 
as  far  as  I  can  in  my  own  fashion,  to  give  you 
some  notion  of  how  they  work.  We  shall  find  it 
easiest  to  take  a  simple  case,  and  one  as  free  as 
possible  from  every  kind  of  complication. 

I  will  suppose,  therefore,  that  all  the  habitable 
part  of  this  globe — the  dry  land,  amounting  to 
about  51,000,000  square  miles — I  will  suppose 
that  the  whole  of  that  dry  land  has  the  same 
climate,  and  that  it  is  composed  of  the  same  kind 
of  rock  or  soil,  so  that  there  will  be  the  same 
station  everywhere ;  we  thus  get  rid  of  the  peculiar 
influence  of  different  climates  and  stations.  I 
will  then  imagine  that  there  shall  be  but  one 
organic  being  in  the  world,  and  that  shall  be  a 
plant.  In  this  we  start  fair.  Its  food  is  to  be 
carbonic  acid,  water  and  ammonia,  and  the  saline 
matters  in  the  soil,  which  are,  by  the  supposition, 
everywhere  alike.  We  take  one  single  plant, 
with  no  opponents,  no  helpers,  and  no  rivals ;  it  is 
to  be  a  "  fair  field,  and  no  favour."  Now,  I  will 
ask  you  to  imagine  further  that  it  shall  be  a  plant 
which  shall  produce  every  year  fifty  seeds,  which 
is  a  very  moderate  number  for  a  plant  to  produce  ; 
and  that,  by  the  action  of  the  winds  and  currents, 
these  seeds  shall  be  equally  and  gradually  dis- 
tributed over  the  whole  surface  of  the  land.  I 
want  you  now  to  trace  out  what  will  occur,  and 
you  will  observe  that  I  am  not  talking  fallaciously 


XI     PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    437 

any  more  than  a  mathematician  does  when  he  ex- 
poun  Is  his  problem.  If  you  show  that  the  con- 
ditions of  your  problem  are  such  as  may  actually 
occur  in  Nature  and  do  not  transgress  any  of  the 
known  laws  of  Nature  in  working  out  your  pro- 
position, then  you  are  as  safe  in  the  conclusion 
you  arrive  at  as  is  the  mathematician  in  arriving 
at  the  solution  of  his  problem.  In  science,  the 
only  way  of  getting  rid  of  the  complications  with 
which  a  subject  of  this  kind  is  environed,  is  to 
work  in  this  deductive  method.  What  will  be 
the  result,  then  ?  I  will  suppose  that  every  plant 
requires  one  square  foot  of  ground  to  live  upon ; 
and  the  result  will  be  that,  in  the  course  of  nine 
years,  the  plant  will  have  occupied  every  single 
available  spot  in  the  whole  globe  !  I  have  chalked 
upon  the  blackboard  the  figures  by  which  I  arrive 
at  the  result : — 


Plants. 

Plants. 

1 

x 

50  in  1st  year  = 

50 

50 

X 

50  „  2nd 

n 

as 

2,500 

2,500 

x 

50  „  3rd 

as 

125,000 

125,000 

X 

50    ,  4th 

— 

6,250,000 

6,250,000 

X 

50 

5th 

n 

as 

312,500,000 

312,500,000 

X 

50 

6th 

M 

= 

15,625,000,000 

15,625,000,000 

X 

50 

7th 

,, 

= 

781,250,000,000 

781,250,000,000 

X 

50 

8th 

J} 

= 

39,062,500,000.000 

39,062,500,000,000 

X 

50 

9th 

,, 

= 

1,953,125,000,000,000 

51,000,000    square 

miles  —  the^ 

dry   surface   of   ' 

he 

earth  x  1 

27,878,400—  the 

]i 

imber   off 

• 

--:  S( 

1,42  ,79  ,4     ,       , 

sq.   ft.  in  1  sq.  mile 

being  531,326,600,000,000 

square  feet  less  than  would  be  required  at  the  eud  of  the  ninth 
year. 


438  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

You  will  see  from  this  that,  at  the  end  of  the 
first  year  the  single  plant  will  have  produced  fifty 
more  of  its  kind  ;  by  the  end  of  the  second  year 
these  will  have  increased  to  2,500  ;  and  so  on.  in 
succeeding  years,  you  get  beyond  even  trillions ; 
and  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  I  could  tell  you  what 
the  proper  arithmetical  denomination  of  the  total 
number  really  is ;  but,  at  any  rate,  you  will  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  all  those  noughts.  Then 
you  see  that  at  the  bottom,  I  have  taken  the 
51,000,000  of  square  miles,  constituting  the  sur- 
face of  the  dry  land  ;  and  as  the  number  of  square 
feet  are  placed  under  and  subtracted  from  the 
number  of  seeds  that  would  be  produced  in  the 
ninth  year,  you  can  see  at  once  that  there  would 
be  an  immense  number  more  of  plants  than  there 
would  be  square  feet  of  ground  for  their  accom- 
modation. This  is  certainly  quite  enough  to 
prove  my  point;  that  between  the  eighth  and  ninth 
year  after  being  planted  the  single  plant  would  have 
stocked  the  whole  available  surface  of  the  earth. 

This  is  a  thing  which  is  hardly  conceivable — it 
seems  hardly  imaginable — yet  it  is  so.  It  is 
indeed  simply  the  law  of  Malthus  exemplified. 
Mr.  Malthus  was  a  clergyman,  who  worked  out 
this  subject  most  minutely  and  truthfully  some 
years  ago  ;  he  showed  quite  clearly — and  although 
he  was  much  abused  for  his  conclusions  at  the 
time,  they  have  never  yet  been  disproved  and 
never  will  be — he  showed  that  in  consequence  of 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC  NATURE         439 

the  increase  in  the  number  of  organic  beings  in  a 
geometrical  ratio,  while  the  means  of  existence 
cannot  be  made  to  increase  in  the  same  ratio,  that 
there  must  come  a  time  when  the  number  of  or- 
ganic beings  will  be  in  excess  of  the  power  of  pro- 
duction of  nutriment,  and  that  thus  some  check 
must  arise  to  the  further  increase  of  those  organic 
beings.  At  the  end  of  the  ninth  year  we  have  seen 
that  each  plant  would  not  be  able  to  get  its  full 
square  foot  of  ground,  and  at  the  end  of  another 
year  it  would  have  to  share  that  space  with  fifty 
others  the  produce  of  the  seeds  which  it  would 
give  off. 

What,  then,  takes  place  ?  Every  plant  grows 
up,  nourishes,  occupies  its  square  foot  of  ground, 
and  gives  off  its  fifty  seeds  ;  but  notice  this,  that 
out  of  this  number  only  one  can  come  to  anything; 
there  is  thus,  as  it  were,  forty-nine  chances  to  one 
against  its  growing  up  ;  it  depends  upon  the  most 
fortuitous  circumstances  whether  any  one  of  these 
fifty  seeds  shall  grow  up  and  flourish,  or  whether 
it  shall  die  and  perish.  This  is  what  Mr.  Darwin 
has  drawn  attention  to,  and  called  the  "  STRUGGLE 
FOR  EXISTENCE  " ;  and  I  have  taken  this  simple 
case  of  a  plant  because  some  people  imagine  that 
the  phrase  seems  to  imply  a  sort  of  fight. 

I  have  taken  this  plant  and  shown  you  that  this 
is  the  result  of  the  ratio  of  the  increase,  the  neces- 
sary result  of  the  arrival  of  a  time  coming  for  every 
species  when  exactly  as  many  members  must  be 

67 


440  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

destroyed  as  are  born ;  that  is  the  inevitable  ulti- 
mate result  of  the  rate  of  production.  Now,  what 
is  the  result  of  all  this  ?  I  have  said  that  there 
are  forty-nine  struggling  against  every  one  ;  and 
it  amounts  to  this,  that  the  smallest  possible  start 
given  to  any  one  seed  may  give  it  an  advantage 
which  will  enable  it  to  get  ahead  of  all  the  others  ; 
anything  that  will  enable  any  one  of  these  seeds  to 
germinate  six  hours  before  any  of  the  others  will, 
other  things  being  alike,  enable  it  to  choke  them 
out  altogether.  I  have  shown  you  that  there  is 
no  particular  in  which  plants  will  not  vary  from 
each  other ;  it  is  quite  possible  that  one  of  our 
imaginary  plants  may  vary  in  such  a  character  as 
the  thickness  of  the  integument  of  its  seeds ;  it 
might  happen  that  one  of  the  plants  might  pro- 
duce seeds  having  a  thinner  integument,  and  that 
would  enable  the  seeds  of  that  plant  to  germinate 
a  little  quicker  than  those  of  any  of  the  others,  and 
those  seeds  would  most  inevitably  extinguish  the 
forty-nine  times  as  many  that  were  struggling 
with  them. 

I  have  put  it  in  this  way,  but  you  see  the  practi- 
cal result  of  the  process  is  the  same  as  %if  some 
person  had  nurtured  the  one  and  destroyed  the 
other  seeds.  It  does  not  matter  how  the  variation 
is  produced,  so  long  as  it  is  once  allowed  to  occur. 
The  variation  in  the  plant  once  fairly  started  tends 
to  become  hereditary  and  reproduce  itself;  the 
seeds  would  spread  themselves  in  the  same  way 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          441 

and  take  part  in  the  struggle  with  the  forty-nine 
hundred,  or  forty-nine  thousand,  with  which  they 
might  be  exposed.  Thus,  by  degrees,  this  variety 
with  some  slight  organic  change  or  modification, 
must  spread  itself  over  the  whole  surface  of  the 
habitable  globe,  and  extirpate  or  replace  the  other 
kinds.  That  is  what  is  meant  by  NATURAL 
SELECTION  ;  that  is  the  kind  of  argument  by  which 
it  is  perfectly  demonstrable  that  the  conditions  of 
existence  may  play  exactly  the  same  part  for 
natural  varieties  as  man  does  for  domesticated 
varieties.  No  one  doubts  at  all  that  particular 
circumstances  may  be  more  favourable  for  one 
plant  and  less  so  for  another,  and  the  moment  you 
admit  that,  you  admit  the  selective  power  of 
nature.  Now,  although  I  have  been  putting  a 
hypothetical  case,  you  must  not  suppose  that  I 
have  been  reasoning  hypothetical! y.  There  are 
plenty  of  direct  experiments  which  bear  out  what 
we  may  call  the  theory  of  natural  selection  ;  there 
is  extremely  good  authority  for  the  statement  that 
if  you  take  the  seed  of  mixed  varieties  of  wheat 
and  sow  it,  collecting  the  seed  next  year  and  sow- 
ing it  again,  at  length  you  will  find  that  out  of  all 
your  varieties  only  two  or  three  have  lived,  or  per- 
haps even  only  one.  There  were  one  or  two 
varieties  which  were  best  fitted  to  get  on,  and  they 
have  killed  out  the  other  kinds  in  just  the  same 
way  and  with  just  the  same  certainty  as  if  you  had 
taken  the  trouble  to  remove  them.  As  I  have 


442  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

already*  said,  the  operation  of  nature  is  exactly 
the  same  as  the  artificial  operation  of  man. 

But  if  this  be  true  of  that  simple  case,  which  I 
put  before  you,  where  there  is  nothing  but  the 
rivalry  of  one  member  of  a  species  with  others, 
what  must  be  the  operation  of  selective  conditions, 
when  you  recollect  as  a  matter  of  fact,  that  for 
every  species  of  animal  or  plant  there  are  fifty  or 
a  hundred  species  which  might  all,  more  or  less,  be 
comprehended  in  the  same  climate,  food,  and  sta- 
tion ; — that  every  plant  has  multitudinous  animals 
which  prey  upon  it,  and  which  are  its  direct  oppo- 
nents ;  and  that  these  have  other  animals  preying 
upon  them, — that  every  plant  has  its  indirect 
helpers  in  the  birds  that  scatter  abroad  its  seed, 
and  the  animals  that  manure  it  with  their  dung  ; — 
I  say,  when  these  things  are  considered,  it  seems 
impossible  that  any  variation  which  may  arise  in 
a  species  iu  nature  should  not  tend  in  some  way 
or  other  either  to  be  a  little  better  or  worse  than 
the  previous  stock ;  if  it  is  a  little  better  it  will 
have  an  advantage  over  and  tend  to  extirpate  the 
latter  in  this  crush  and  struggle;  and  if  it  is  a 
little  worse  it  will  itself  be  extirpated. 

I  know  nothing  that  more  appropriately  ex- 
presses this,  than  the  phrase,  "the  struggle  for 
existence  "  ;  because  it  brings  before  your  minds, 
in  a  vivid  sort  of  way,  some  of  the  simplest  pos- 
sible circumstances  connected  with  it.  When  a 
struggle  is  intense  there  must  be  some  who  are 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          443 

sure  to  be  trodden  down,  crushed,  and  overpowered 
by  others ;  and  there  will  be  some  who  just 
manage  to  get  through  only  by  the  help  of  the 
slightest  accident.  I  recollect  reading  an  account 
of  the  famous  retreat  of  the  French  troops,  under 
Napoleon,  from  Moscow.  Worn  out,  tired,  and 
dejected,  they  at  length  came  to  a  great  river  over 
which  there  was  but  one  bridge  for  the  passage  of 
the  vast  army.  Disorganised  and  demoralised  as 
that  army  was,  the  struggle  must  certainly  have 
been  a  terrible  one — every  one  heeding  only  him- 
self, and  crushing  through  the  ranks  and  treading 
down  his  fellows.  The  writer  of  the  narrative, 
who  was  himself  one  of  those  who  were  fortunate 
enough  to  succeed  in  getting  over,  and  not  among 
the  thousands  who  were  left  behind  or  forced  into 
the  river,  ascribed  his  escape  to  the  fact  that  he 
saw  striding  onward  through  the  mass  a  great 
strong  fellow, — one  of  the  French  Cuirassiers,  who 
had  on  a  large  blue  cloak — and  he  had  enough 
presence  of  mind  to  catch  and  retain  a  hold  of  this 
strong  man's  cloak.  He  says,  "  I  caught  hold  of 
his  cloak,  and  although  he  swore  at  me  and  cut 
at  and  struck  me  by  turns,  and  at  last,  when  he 
found  he  could  not  shake  me  off,  fell  to  entreating 
me  to  leave  go  or  I  should  prevent  him  from 
escaping,  besides  not  assisting  myself,  I  still  kept 
tight  hold  of  him,  and  would  not  quit  my  grasp 
until  he  had  at  last  dragged  me  through."  Here 
you  see  was  a  case  of  selective  saving — if  we  may 


444  THE   CAUSES  OF   THE  XI 

so  term  it — depending  for  its  success  on  the 
strength  of  the  cloth  of  the  Cuirassier's  cloak.  It 
is  the  same  in  nature  ;  every  species  has  its  bridge  of 
Beresina  ;  it  has  to  fight  its  way  through  and  strug- 
gle with  other  species ;  and  when  well-nigh  over- 
powered, it  may  be  that  the  smallest  chance,  some- 
thing in  its  colour,  perhaps — the  minutest  circum- 
stance— will  turn  the  scale  one  way  or  the  other. 

Suppose  that  by  a  variation  of  the  black  race  it 
had  produced  the  white  man  at  any  time — you 
know  that  the  Negroes  are  said  to  believe  this  to 
have  been  the  case,  and  to  imagine  that  Cain 
was  the  first  white  man,  and  that  we  are  his 
descendants — suppose  that  this  had  ever  hap- 
pened, and  that  the  first  residence  of  this  human 
being  was  on  the  West  Coast  of  Africa.  There  is  no 
great  structural  difference  between  the  white  man 
and  the  Negro,  and  yet  there  is  something  so  sin- 
gularly different  in  the  constitution  of  the  two, 
that  the  malarias  of  that  country,  which  do  not 
hurt  the  black  at  all,  cut  off  and  destroy  the  white. 
Then  you  see  there  would  have  been  a  selective 
operation  performed  ;  if  the  white  man  had  risen 
in  that  way,  he  would  have  been  selected  out  and 
removed  by  means  of  the  malaria.  Now  there 
really  is  a  very  curious  case  of  selection  of  this 
sort  among  pigs,  and  it  is  a  case  of  selection  of 
colour  too.  In  the  woods  of  Florida  there  are  a 
great  many  pigs,  and  it  is  a  very  curious  thing  that 
they  are  all  black,  every  one  of  them.  Professor 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF  ORGANIC   NATURE          445 

Wyman  was  there  some  years  ago,  and  on  noticing 
no  pigs  but  these  black  ones,  he  asked  some  of  the 
people  how  it  was  that  they  had  no  white  pigs, 
and  the  reply  was  that  in  the  woods  of  Florida 
there  was  a  root  which  they  called  the  Paint 
Root,  and  that  if  the  white  pigs  were  to  eat  any 
of  it,  it  had  the  effect  of  making  their  hoofs  crack, 
and  they  died,  but  if  the  black  pigs  ate  any  of  it, 
it  did  not  hurt  them  at  all.  Here  was  a  very 
simple  case  of  natural  selection.  A  skilful  breeder 
could  not  more  carefully  develop  the  black  breed 
of  pigs,  and  weed  out  all  the  white  pigs,  than  the 
Paint  Root  does. 

To  show  you  how  remarkably  indirect  may  be 
such  natural  selective  agencies  as  I  have  referred 
to,  I  will  conclude  by  noticing  a  case  mentioned 
by  Mr.  Darwin,  and  which  is  certainly  one  of  the 
most  curious  of  its  kind.  It  is  that  of  the  Humble 
Bee.  It  has  been  noticed  that  there  are  a  great 
many  more  humble  bees  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
towns,  than  out  in  the  open  country ;  and  the  ex- 
planation of  the  matter  is  this :  the  humble  bees 
build  nests,  in  which  they  store  their  honey  and 
deposit  the  larvae  and  eggs.  The  field  mice  are 
amazingly  fond  of  the  honey  and  larvae  ;  therefore, 
wherever  there  are  plenty  of  field  mice,  as  in  the 
country,  the  humble  bees  are  kept  down  ;  but  in 
the  neighbourhood  of  towns,  the  number  of  cats 
which  prowl  about  the  fields  eat  up  the  field  mice, 
and  of  course  the  more  mice  they  eat  up  the  less 


446         PHENOMENA  OF   ORGANIC   NATURE  xi 

there  are  to  prey  upon  the  larvae  of  the  bees — the 
cats  are  therefore  the  INDIRECT  HELPERS  of  the 
bees.1  Coming  back  a  step  farther  we  may  say 
that  the  old  maids  are  also  indirect  friends  of  the 
humble  bees,  and  indirect  enemies  of  the  field 
mice,  as  they  keep  the  cats  which  eat  up  the 
latter  !  This  is  an  illustration  somewhat  beneath 
the  dignity  of  the  subject,  perhaps,  but  it  occurs 
to  me  in  passing,  and  with  it  I  will  conclude  this 
lecture. 

1  The  humble  bees,  on  the  other  hand,  are  direct  helpers  of 
some  plants,  such  as  the  heartsease  and  red  clover,  which  are 
fertilised  by  the  visits  of  the  bees  ;  and  they  are  indirect  helpers 
of  the  numerous  insects  which  are  more  or  less  completely  sup- 
ported by  the  heartsease  and  red  clover. 


VI 


A  CRITICAL  EXAMINATION  OF  THE  POSITION  OF 
MR.  DARWIN'S  WORK,  "ON  THE  ORIGIN  OF 
SPECIES,"  IN  RELATION  TO  THE  COMPLETE 
THEORY  OF  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  PHENOMENA 
OF  ORGANIC  NATURE. 

IN  the  preceding  five  lectures  I  have  endeav- 
oured to  give  you  an  account  of  those  facts,  and 
of  those  reasonings  from  facts,  which  form  the 
data  upon  which  all  theories  regarding  the  causes 
of  the  phenomena  of  organic  nature  must  be 
based.  And,  although  I  have  had  frequent 
occasion  to  quote  Mr.  Darwin — as  all  persons  here- 
after, in  speaking  upon  these  subjects,  will  have 
occasion  to  quote  his  famous  book  on  the  "  Origin 
of  Species," — you  must  yet  remember  that,  wher- 
ever I  have  quoted  him,  it  has  not  been  upon 
theoretical  points,  or  for  statements  in  any  way 
connected  with  his  particular  speculations,  but  on 
matters  of  fact,  brought  forward  by  himself,  or 
collected  by  himself,  and  which  appear  incidentally 
in  his  book.  If  a  man  will  make  a  book,  pro- 


448  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  X 

fessing  to  discuss  a  single  question,  an  encyclo- 
paedia, I  cannot  help  it. 

Now,  having  had  an  opportunity  of  considering 
in  this  sort  of  way  the  different  statements  bear- 
ing upon  all  theories  whatsoever,  I  have  to  lay 
before  you,  as  fairly  as  I  can,  what  is  Mr.  Darwin's 
view  of  the  matter  and  what  position  his  theories 
hold,  when  judged  by  the  principles  which  I  have 
previously  laid  down,  as  deciding  our  judgments 
upon  all  theories  and  hypotheses. 

I  have  already  stated  to  you  that  the  inquiry 
respecting  the  causes  of  the  phenomena  of  organic 
nature  resolves  itself  into  two  problems — the  first 
being,  the  question  of  the  origination  of  living  or 
organic  beings ;  and  the  second  being  the  totally 
distinct  problem  of  the  modification  and  perpetua- 
tion of  organic  beings  when  they  have  already 
come  into  existence.  The  first  question  Mr. 
Darwin  does  not  touch ;  he  does  not  deal  with  it 
at  all ;  but  he  says : — "  Given  the  origin  of  organic 
matter — supposing  its  creation  to  have  already 
taken  place,  my  object  is  to  show  in  consequence 
of  what  laws  and  what  demonstrable  properties  of 
organic  matter,  and  of  its  environments,  such 
states  of  organic  nature  as  those  with  which  we 
are  acquainted  must  have  come  about."  This,  you 
will  observe,  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  proposition  ; 
every  person  has  a  right  to  define  the  limits  of 
the  inquiry  which  he  sets  before  himself ;  and  yet 
it  is  a  most  singular  thing  that  in  all  the  multi- 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    449 

farious,  and,  not  unfrequently,  ignorant  attacks 
which  have  been  made  upon  the  "  Origin  of 
Species,"  there  is  nothing  which  has  been  more 
speciously  criticised  than  this  particular  limitation. 
If  people  have  nothing  else  to  urge  against  the 
book,  they  say — "  Well,  after  all,  you  see  Mr. 
Darwin's  explanation  of  the  '  Origin  of  Species ' 
is  not  good  for  much,  because,  in  the  long  run,  he 
admits  that  he  does  not  know  how  organic  matter 
began  to  exist.  But  if  you  admit  any  special 
creation  for  the  first  particle  of  organic  matter 
you  may  just  as  well  admit  it  for  all  the  rest ;  five  . 
hundred  or  five  thousand  distinct  creations  are 
just  as  intelligible,  and  just  as  little  difficult  to 
understand,  as  one."  The  answer  to  these  cavils 
is  two -fold.  In  the  first  place,  all  human  inquiry 
must  stop  somewhere ;  all  our  knowledge  and  all 
our  investigation  cannot  take  us  beyond  the  limits 
set  by  the  finite  and  restricted  character  of  our 
faculties,  or  destroy  the  endless  unknown,  which 
accompanies,  like  its  shadow,  the  endless  procession 
of  phenomena.  So  far  as  I  can  venture  to  offer 
an  opinion  on  such  a  matter,  the  purpose  of  our 
being  in  existence,  the  highest  object  that  human 
beings  can  set  before  themselves,  is  not  the  pursuit 
of  any  such  chimera  as  the  annihilation  of  the 
unknown ;  but  it  is  simply  the  unwearied  endeav- 
our to  remove  its  boundaries  a  little  further  from 
our  little  sphere  of  action. 

I  wonder  if  any  historian  would  for  a  moment 


450  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

admit  the  objection,  that  it  is  preposterous  to 
trouble  ourselves  about  the  history  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  because  we  do  not  know  anything  positive 
about  the  origin  and  first  building  of  the  city  of 
Rome  !  Would  it  be  a  fair  objection  to  urge, 
respecting  the  sublime  discoveries  of  a  Newton,  or 
a  Kepler,  those  great  philosophers,  whose  dis- 
coveries have  been  of  the  profoundest  benefit  and 
service  to  all  men — to  say  to  them — "  After  all 
that  you  have  told  us  as  to  how  the  planets  re- 
volve, and  how  they  are  maintained  in  their  orbits, 
you  cannot  tell  us  what  is  the  cause  of  the  origin 
of  the  sun,  moon,  and  stars.  So  what  is  the  use 
of  what  you  have  done  ?  "  Yet  these  objections 
would  not  be  one  whit  more  preposterous  than 
the  objections  which  have  been  made  to  the 
"  Origin  of  Species."  Mr.  Darwin,  then,  had  a 
perfect  right  to  limit  his  inquiry  as  he  pleased, 
and  the  pnly  question  for  us — the  inquiry  being 
so  limited — is  to  ascertain  whether  the  method  of 
his  inquiry  is  sound  or  unsound  ;  whether  he  has 
obeyed  the  canons  which  must  guide  and  govern 
all  investigation,  or  whether  he  has  broken 
them ;  and  it  was  because  our  inquiry  this 
evening  is  essentially  limited  to  that  question, 
that  I  spent  a  good  deal  of  time  in  a  former 
lecture  (which,  perhaps  some  of  you  thought 
might  have  been  better  employed),  in  endeavoui1- 
irig  to  illustrate  the  method  and  nature  of  scien- 
tific inquiry  in  general.  We  shall  now  have  to 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          451 

put  in  practice  the    principles  that  I   then   laid 
down. 

I  stated  to  you  in  substance,  if  not  in  words,  that 
wherever  there  are  complex  masses  of  phenomena 
to  be  inquired  into,  whether  they  be  phenomena 
of  the  affairs  of  daily  life,  or  whether  they  belong 
to  the  more  abstruse  and  difficult  problems  laid 
before  the  philosopher,  our  course  of  proceeding 
in  unravelling  that  complex  chain  of  phenomena 
with  a  view  to  get  at  its  cause,  is  always  the  same  ; 
in  all  cases  we  must  invent  an  hypothesis;  we 
must  place  before  ourselves  some  more  or  less 
likely  supposition  respecting  that  cause  ;  and  then, 
having  assumed  an  hypothesis,  having  supposed  a 
cause  for  the  phenomena  in  question,  we  must 
endeavour,  on  the  one  hand,  to  demonstrate  our 
hypothesis,  or,  on  the  other,  to  upset  and  reject  it 
altogether,  by  testing  it  in  three  ways.  We  imist, 
in  the  first  place,  be  prepared  to  prove  that  the 
supposed  causes  of  the  phenomena  exist  in  nature  ; 
that  they  are  what  the  logicians  call  vera  causce — 
true  causes ; — in  the  next  place,  we  should  be  pre- 
pared to  show  that  the  assumed  causes  of  the 
phenomena  are  competent  to  produce  such  pheno- 
mena as  those  which  we  wish  to  explain  by  them ; 
and  in  the  last  place,  we  ought  to  be  able  to  show 
that  no  other  known  causes  are  competent  to  pro- 
duce these  phenomena.  If  we  can  succeed  in  satis- 
fying these  three  conditions  we  shall  have  demon- 
strated our  hypothesis ;  or  rather  I  ought  to  say 


452  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

we  shall  have  proved  it  as  far  as  certainty  is  pos- 
sible for  us ;  for,  after  all,  there  is  no  one  of  our 
surest  convictions  which  may  not  be  upset,  or  at 
any  rate  modified  by  a  further  accession  of  know- 
ledge. It  was  because  it  satisfied  these  condi- 
tions that  we  accepted  the  hypothesis  as  to  the 
disappearance  of  the  tea-pot  and  spoons  in  the 
case  I  supposed  in  a  previous  lecture ;  we  found 
that  our  hypothesis  on  that  subject  was  tenable 
and  valid,  because  the  supposed  cause  existed  in 
nature,  because  it  was  competent  to  account  for 
the  phenomena,  and  because  no  other  known  cause 
was  competent  to  account  for  them  ;  and  it  is  upon 
similar  grounds  that  any  hypothesis  you  choose  to 
name  is  accepted  in  science  as  tenable  and 
valid. 

What  is  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis  ?  As  I  appre- 
hend it — for  I  have  put  it  into  a  shape  more  con- 
venient for  common  purposes  than  I  could  find 
verbatim  in  his  book — as  I  apprehend  it,  I  say, 
it  is,  that  all  the  phenomena  of  organic  nature, 
past  and  present,  result  from,  or  are  caused  by, 
the  inter-action  of  those  properties  of  organic 
matter,  which  we  have  called  ATAVISM  and  VARIA- 
BILITY, with  the  CONDITIONS  OF  EXISTENCE,  or, 
in  other  words, — given  the  existence  of  organic 
matter,  its  tendency  to  transmit  its  properties,  and. 
its  tendency  occasionally  to  vary  ;  and,  lastly,  given 
the  conditions  of  existence  by  which  organic  mat- 
ter is  surrounded — that  these  put  together  are  the 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC  NATURE          453 

causes  of  the  Present  and  of  the  Past  conditions  of 
ORGANIC  NATURE. 

Such  is  the  hypothesis  as  I  understand  it.  Now 
let  us  see  how  it  will  stand  the  various  tests  which 
I  laid  down  just  now.  In  the  first  place,  do  these 
supposed  causes  of  the  phenomena  exist  in  nature  ? 
Is  it  the  fact  that,  in  nature,  these  properties  of 
organic  matter — atavism  and  variability — and 
those  phenomena  which  we  have  called  the  con- 
ditions of  existence, — is  it  true  that  they  exist  ? 
Well,  of  course,  if  they  do  not  exist,  all  that  I  have 
told  you  in  the  last  three  or  four  lectures  must  be 
incorrect,  because  I  have  been  attempting  to  prove 
that  they  do  exist,  and  I  take  it  that  there  is 
abundant  evidence  that  they  do  exist ;  so  far, 
therefore,  the  hypothesis  does  not  break  down. 

But  in  the  next  place  comes  a  much  more  diffi- 
cult inquiry: — Are  the  causes  indicated  compe- 
tent to  give  rise  to  the  phenomena  of  organic 
nature  ?  I  suspect  that  this  is  indubitable  to  a 
certain  extent.  It  is  demonstrable,  I  think,  as  I 
have  endeavoured  to  show  you,  that  they  are  per- 
fectly competent  to  give  rise  to  all  the  phenomena 
which  are  exhibited  by  RACES  in  nature.  Further- 
more, I  believe  that  they  are  quite  competent  to 
account  for  all  that  we  may  call  purely  structural 
phenomena  which  are  exhibited  by  SPECIES  in 
nature.  On  that  point  also  I  have  already  en- 
larged somewhat.  Again,  I  think  that  the  causes 
assumed  are  competent  to  account  for  most  of  the 


454  THE   CAUSES   OF  THE  xi 

physiological  characteristics  of  species,  and  I  not 
only  think  that  they  are  competent  to  account  for 
them,  but  I  think  that  they  account  for  many 
things  which  otherwise  remain  wholly  unaccount- 
able and  inexplicable,  and  I  may  say  incompre- 
hensible. For  a  full  exposition  of  the  grounds  on 
which  this  conviction  is  based,  I  must  refer  you  to 
Mr.  Darwin's  work ;  all  that  I  can  do  now  is  to 
illustrate  what  I  have  said  by  two  or  three  cases 
taken  almost  at  random. 

I  drew  your  attention,  on  a  previous  evening,  to 
the  facts  which  are  embodied  in  our  systems  of 
Classification,  which  are  the  results  of  the  examin- 
ation and  comparison  of  the  different  members 
of  the  animal  kingdom  one  with  another.  I  men- 
tioned that  the  whole  of  the  animal  kingdom  is 
divisible  into  five  sub-kingdoms  ;  that  each  of  these 
sub-kingdoms  is  again  divisible  into  provinces ; 
that  each  province  may  be  divided  into  classes, 
and  the  classes  into  the  successively  smaller  groups, 
orders,  families,  genera,  and  species. 

Now,  in  each  of  these  groups  the  resemblance 
in  structure  among  the  members  of  the  group  is 
closer  in  proportion  as  the  group  is  smaller.  Thus, 
a  man  and  a  worm  are  members  of  the  animal 
kingdom  in  virtue  of  certain  apparently  slight 
though  really  fundamental  resemblances  which 
they  present.  But  a  man  and  a  fish  are  members  of 
the  same  sub-kingdom  Vertebrata,  because  they  are 
much  more  like  one  another  than  either  of  them 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    455 

is  to  a  worm,  or  a  snail,  or  any  member  of  the  other 
sub-kingdoms.  For  similar  reasons  men  and  horses 
are  arranged  as  members  of  the  same  Class,  Mam- 
malia; men  and  apes  as  members  of  the  same 
Order,  Primates ;  and  if  there  were  any  animals 
more  like  men  than  they  were  like  any  of  the 
apes,  and  yet  different  from  men  in  important  and 
constant  particulars  of  their  organisation,  we  should 
rank  them  as  members  of  the  same  Family,  or  of 
the  same  Genus,  but  as  of  distinct  Species. 

That  it  is  possible  to  arrange  all  the  varied 
forms  of  animals  into  groups,  having  this  sort  of 
singular  subordination  one  to  the  other,  is  a  very 
remarkable  circumstance  ;  but,  as  Mr.  Darwin  re- 
marks, this  is  a  result  which  is  quite  to  be  ex- 
pected, if  the  principles  which  he  lays  down  be 
correct.  Take  the  case  of  the  races  which  are 
known  to  be  produced  by  the  operation  of  atavism 
and  variability,  and  the  conditions  of  existence 
which  check  and  modify  these  tendencies.  Take 
the  case  of  the  pigeons  that  I  brought  before  you  : 
there  it  was  shown  that  they  might  be  all  classed 
as  belonging  to  some  one  of  five  principal  divi- 
sions, and  that  within  these  divisions  other  sub- 
ordinate groups  might  be  formed.  The  members 
of  these  groups  are  related  to  one  another  in  just 
the  same  way  as  the  genera  of  a  family,  and  the 
groups  themselves  as  the  families  of  an  order,  or 
the  orders  of  a  class  ;  while  all  have  the  same  sort 
of  structural  relations  with  the  wild  rock-pigeon, 

58 


456  THE  CAUSES  OF   THE  xi 

as  the  members  of  any  great  natural  group  have 
with  a  real  or  imaginary  typical  form.  Now,  we 
know  that  all  varieties  of  pigeons  of  every  kind, 
have  arisen  by  a  process  of  selective  breeding  from 
a  common  stock,  the  rock-pigeon  ;  hence,  you  see, 
that  if  all  species  of  animals  have  proceeded  from 
some  common  stock,  the  general  character  of  their 
structural  relations,  and  of  our  systems  of  classifi- 
cation, which  express  those  relations,  would  be  just 
what  we  find  them  to  be.  In  other  words,  the 
hypothetical  cause  is,  so  far,  competent  to  produce 
effects  similar  to  those  of  the  real  cause. 

Take,  again,  another  set  of  very  remarkable 
facts, — the  existence  of  what  are  called  rudi- 
mentary organs,  organs  for  which  we  can  find 
no  obvious  use,  in  the  particular  animal  econ- 
omy in  which  they  are  found,  and  yet  which  are 
there. 

Such  are  the  splint-like  bones  in  the  leg  of  the 
horse,  which  I  here  show  you,  and  which  corre- 
spond with  bones  which  belong  to  certain  toes  and 
fingers  in  the  human  hand  and  foot.  In  the  horse 
you  see  they  are  quite  rudimentary,  and  bear 
neither  toes  nor  fingers ;  so  that  the  horse  has 
only  one  "finger'7  in  his  fore-foot  and  one  "toe" 
in  his  hind-foot.  But  it  is  a  very  curious  thing 
that  the  animals  closely  allied  to  the  horse  show 
more  toes  than  he  ;  as  the  rhinoceros,  for  instance  : 
he  has  these  extra  toes  well  formed,  and  anatomi- 
cal facts  show  very  clearly  that  he  is  very  closely 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    457 

related  to  the  horse  indeed.  So  we  may  say  that 
animals,  in  an  anatomical  sense  nearly  related  to 
the  horse,  have  those  parts  which  are  rudimentary 
in  him  fully  developed. 

Again,  the  sheep  and  the  cow  have  no  cutting- 
teeth,  but  only  a  hard  pad  in  the  upper  jaw.  That 
is  the  common  characteristic  of  ruminants  in 
general.  But  the  calf  has  in  its  upper  jaw  some 
rudiments  of  teeth  which  never  are  developed,  and 
never  play  the  part  of  teeth  at  all.  Well,  if 
you  go  back  in  time,  you  find  some  of  the  older, 
now  extinct,  allies  of  the  ruminants  have  well- 
developed  teeth  in  their  upper  jaws ;  and  at  the 
present  day  the  pig  (which  is  in  structure  closely 
connected  with  ruminants)  has  well-developed 
teeth  in  its  upper  jaw ;  so  that  here  is  another 
instance  of  organs  well-developed  and  very  useful, 
in  one  animal,  represented  by  rudimentary  organs, 
for  which  we  can  discover  no  purpose  whatsoever 
in  another  closely  allied  animal.  The  whalebone 
whale,  again,  has  horny  "  whalebone  "  plates  in  its 
mouth,  and  no  teeth ;  but  the  young  foetal  whale 
before  it  is  born  has  teeth  in  its  jaws;  they,  how- 
ever, are  never  used,  and  they  never  come  to  any- 
thing. But  other  members  of  the  group  to  which 
the  whale  belongs  have  well-developed  teeth  in 
both  jaws. 

Upon  any  hypothesis  of  special  creation,  facts  of 
this  kind  appear  to  me  to  be  entirely  unaccount- 
able and  inexplicable,  but  they  cease  to  be  so  if 


458  THE  CAUSES   OF  THE  XI 

you  accept  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis,  and  see  reason 
for  believing  that  the  whalebone  whale  and  the 
whale  with  teeth  in  its  mouth  both  sprang  from  a 
whale  that  had  teeth,  and  that  the  teeth  of  the 
foetal  whale  are  merely  remnants — recollections, 
if  we  may  so  say — of  the  extinct  whale.  So  in 
the  case  of  the  horse  and  the  rhinoceros  :  suppose 
that  both  have  descended  by  modification  from 
some  earlier  form  which  had  the  normal  number 
of  toes,  and  the  persistence  of  the  rudimentary 
bones  which  no  longer  support  toes  in  the  horse 
becomes  comprehensible. 

In  the  language  that  we  speak  in  England,  and 
in  the  language  of  the  Greeks,  there  are  identical 
verbal  roots,  or  elements  entering  into  the  com- 
position of  words.  That  fact  remains  unintellig- 
ible so  long  as  we  suppose  English  and  Greek  to 
be  independently  created  tongues ;  but  when  it  is 
shown  that  both  languages  are  descended  from 
one  original,  we  give  an  explanation  of  that 
resemblance.  In  the  same  way  the  existence 
of  identical  structural  roots,  if  I  may  so  term 
them,  entering  into  the  composition  of  widely 
different  animals,  is  striking  evidence  in  favour  of 
the  descent  of  those  animals  from  a  common 
original. 

To  turn  to  another  kind  of  illustration  : — If  you 
regard  the  whole  series  of  stratified  rocks — that 
enormous  thickness  of  sixty  or  seventy  thousand 
feet  that  I  have  mentioned  before,  constituting  the 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    459 

only  record  we  have  of  a  most  prodigious  lapse  of 
time,  that  time  being,  in  all  probability,  but  a 
fraction  of  that  of  which  we  have  no  record} — if 
you  observe  in  these  successive  strata  of  rocks 
successive  groups  of  animals  arising  and  dying 
out,  a  constant  succession,  giving  you  the  same 
kind  of  impression,  as  you  travel  from  one  group 
of  strata  to  another,  as  you  would  have  in  travel- 
ling from  one  country  to  another ; — when  you 
find  this  constant  succession  of  forms,  their 
traces  obliterated  except  to  the  man  of  science 
— when  you  look  at  this  wonderful  history,  and 
ask  what  it  means,  it  is  only  a  paltering  with 
words  if  you  are  offered  the  reply — "  They  were 
so  created." 

But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  you  look  on  all 
forms  of  organised  beings  as  the  results  of  the 
gradual  modification  of  a  primitive  type,  the  facts 
receive  a  meaning,  and  you  see  that  these  older 
conditions  are  the  necessary  predecessors  of  the 
present.  Viewed  in  this  light  the  facts  of  palae- 
ontology receive  a  meaning — upon  any  other 
hypothesis  I  am  unable  to  see,  in  the  slightest 
degree,  what  knowledge  or  signification  we  are 
to  draw  out  of  them.  Again,  note  as  bearing 
upon  the  same  point,  the  singular  likeness  which 
obtains  between  the  successive  Faunas  and  Floras, 
whose  remains  are  preserved  on  the  rocks :  you 
never  find  any  great  and  enormous  difference 
between  the  immediately  successive  Faunae  and 


-• 
0 

460  THE    CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

Flora,  unless  you  have  reason  to  believe  there 
has  also  been  a  great  lapse  of  time  or  a  great 
change  of  conditions.  The  animals,  for  instance, 
of  the  newest  tertiary  rocks,  in  any  part  of  the 
world,  are  always,  and  without  exception,  found 
to  be  closely  allied  with  those  which  now  live  in 
that  part  of  the  world.  For  example,  in  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa,  the  large  mammals  are  at  pres- 
ent rhinoceroses,  hippopotamuses,  elephants,  lions, 
tigers,  oxen,  horses,  &c. ;  and  if  you  examine  the 
newest  tertiary  deposits,  which  contain  the 
animals  and  plants  which  immediately  preceded 
those  which  now  exist  in  the  same  country,  you 
do  not  find  gigantic  specimens  of  ant-eaters  and 
kangaroos,  but  you  find  rhinoceroses,  elephants, 
lions,  tigers,  &c., — of  different  species  to  those  now 
living — but  still  their  close  allies.  If  you  turn  to 
South  America,  where,  at  the  present  day,  we  have 
I ,  great  sloths  and  armadilloes  and  creatures  of  that 
kind,  what  do  you  find  in  the  newest  tertjaxifia.? 
You  find  the  great  sloth-like  creature,  the  Mega- 
therium, and  the  great  armadillo,  the  Glyptcdon, 
and  so  on.  And  if  you  go  to  Australia  you  find 
the  same  law  holds  good,  namely,  that  that  con- 
dition of  organic  nature  which  has  preceded  the 
one  which  now  exists,  presents  differences  perhaps 
of  species,  and  of  genera,  but  that  the  great  types 
of  organic  structure  are  the  same  as  those  which 
now  flourish. 

What  meaning  has  this  fact  upon  any  other 

}UkJLjfrA&«jJ^^ 

'fJbtr^(^ifa^t^lp/2/J^        ^ 

"fc  4  »  I  I 

t\s-  )Q  ./6^-^VvA.W  l^i  *•    \*    i~4/ds'Q(,As*\/     ^^ 
}]fj^^JL^^^Ur- 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF  ORGANIC  NATURE          461 

hypothesis  or  supposition  than  one  of  successive 
modification?  But  if  the  population  of  the 
world,  in  any  age,  is  the  result  of  the  gradual 
modification  of  the  forms  which  peopled  it  in  the 
preceding  age — if  that  has  been  the  case,  it  is  in- 
telligible enough  ;  because  we  may  expect  that 
the  creature  that  results  from  the  modification  of 
an  elephantine  mammal  shall  be  something  like 
an  elephant,  and  the  creature  which  is  produced 
by  the  modification  of  an  armadillo-like  mammal 
shall  be  like  an  armadillo.  Upon  that  supposition, 
I  say,  the  facts  are  intelligible ;  upon  any  other, 
that  I  am  aware  of,  they  are  not. 

So  far,  the  facts  of  palaeontology  are  consistent 
with  almost  any  form  of  the  doctrine  of  progressive    JJ., 
modification ;  they  would  not  be  absolutely  incon-    /. 
sistent  with  the  wild  speculations  of  De  Maillot, 
or  with  the  less  objectionable   hypothesis  of  La-  ;jV 
marck.     But  Mr.  Darwin's  views  have  one  peculiar  iv£v-fC- 
merit ;  and  that  is,  that  they  are  perfectly  con- 
sistent with  an  array  of  facts  which  are  utterly  in- 
consistent with,  and  fatal  to,  any  other  hypothesis 
of  progressive  modification  which  has  yet  been 
advanced.     It   is   one  remarkable  peculiarity  of 
Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis  that  it  involves  no  neces- 
sary   progression    or   incessant  modification,  and 
that  it  is  perfectly  consistent  with  the  persistence 
for  any  length  of  time  of  a  given  primitive  stock, 
contemporaneously   with    its   modifications.      To 
return   to   the   case   of  the   domestic   breeds   of 


\fl 


462  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  XI 

pigeons,  for  example  ;  you  have  the  dove-cot 
pigeon,  which  closely  resembles  the  rock  pigeon, 
from  which  they  all  started,  existing  at  the  same 
time  with  the  others.  And  if  species  are  developed 
in  the  same  way  in  nature,  a  primitive  stock  and 
its  modifications  may,  occasionally,  all  find  the 
conditions  fitted  for  their  existence  ;  and  though 
they  come  into  competition,  to  a  certain  extent, 
with  one  another,  the  derivative  species  may  not 
necessarily  extirpate  the  primitive  one,  or  vice 
versd. 

Now  palaeontology  shows  us  many  facts  which 
are  perfectly  harmonious  with  these  observed 
effects  of  the  process  by  which  Mr.  Darwin  sup- 
poses species  to  have  originated,  but  which  appear 
to  me  to  be  totally  inconsistent  with  any  other 
hypothesis  which  has  been  proposed.  There  are 
some  groups  of  animals  and  plants,  in  the  fossil 
world,  which  have  been  said  to  belong  to  "  persist- 
ent types,"  because  they  have  persisted,  with 
very  little  change  indeed,  through  a  very  great 
range  of  time,  while  everything  about  them  has 
changed  largely.  There  are  families  of  fishes 
whose  type  of  construction  has  persisted  all  the 
way  from  the  carboniferous  strata  right  up  to  the 
cretaceous  ;  and  others  which  have  lasted  through 
almost  the  whole  range  of  the  secondary  rocks, 
and  from  the  lias  to  the  older  tertiaries.  It  is 
something  stupendous  this  —  to  consider  a  genus 
lasting  without  essential  modifications  through  all 

WAM;  (wrVL^wt,  fl    tf^ 


-  J  KAt,  ^^^ 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         463 

this  enormous  lapse  of  time  while  almost  every- 
tlm:g  else  was  changed  and  modified. 

Thus  I  have  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Darwin's  hypo- 
thesis will  be  found  competent  to  explain  the  ma- 
jority of  the  phenomena  exhibited  by  species  in 
nature ;  but  in  an  earlier  lecture  I  spoke  cautiously 
with  respect  to  its  power  of  explaining  all  the 
physiological  peculiarities  of  species. 

There  is,  in  fact,  one  set  of  these  peculiarities 
which  the  theory  of  selective  modification,  as  it 
stands  at  present,  is  not  wholly  competent  to 
explain,  and  that  is  the"  group  of  phenomena  which 
I  mentioned  to  you  under  the  name  of  Hybridism, 
and  which  I  explained  to  consist  in  the  sterility  of 
the  offspring  of  certain  species  when  crossed  one 
with  another.  It  matters  not  one  whit  whether 
this  sterility  is  universal,  or  whether  it  exists  only 
in  a  single  case.  Every  hypothesis  is  bound  to 
explain,  or,  at  any  rate,  not  be  inconsistent  with, 
the  whole  of  the  facts  which  it  professes  to  account 
for ;  and  if  there  is  a  single  one  of  these  facts 
which  can  be  shown  to  be  inconsistent  with  (I  do 
not  merely  mean  inexplicable  by,  but  contrary  to) 
the  hypothesis,  the  hypothesis  falls  to  the  ground, 
— it  is  worth  nothing.  One  fact  with  which  it  is 
positively  inconsistent  is  worth  as  much,  and  as 
powerful  in  negativing  the  hypothesis,  as  five 
hundred.  If  I  am  right  in  thus  defining  the  obli- 
gations of  an  hypothesis,  Mr.  Darwin,  in  order  to 
place  his  views  beyond  the  reach  of  all  possible 


464  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

assault,  ought  to  be  able  to  demonstrate  the  possi- 
bility of  developing  from  a  particular  stock  by  se- 
lective breeding,  two  forms,  which  should  either 
be  unable  to  cross  one  with  another,  or  whose 
cross-bred  offspring  should  be  infertile  with  one 
another. 

For,  you  see,  if  you  have  not  done  that  you  have 
not  strictly  fulfilled  all  the  conditions  of  the  prob- 
lem ;  you  have  not  shown  that  you  can  produce, 
by  the  cause  assumed,  all  the  phenomena  which 
you  have  in  nature.  Here  are  the  phenomena  of 
Hybridism  staring  you  in  the  face,  and  you  cannot 
say,  "  I  can,  by  selective  modification,  produce 
these  same  results."  Now,  it  is  admitted  on  all 
hands  that,  at  present,  so  far  as  experiments  have 
gone,  it  has  not  been  found  possible  to  produce 
this  complete  physiological  divergence  by  selective 
breeding.  I  stated  this  very  clearly  before,  and  I 
now  refer  to  the  point,  because,  if  it  could  be 
proved,  not  only  that  this  has  not  been  done,  but 
that  it  cannot  be  done  ;  if  it  could  be  demonstrated 
that  it  is  impossible  to  breed  selectively,  from  any 
stock,  a  form  which  shall  not  breed  with  another, 
produced  from  the  same  stock ;  and  if  we  were 
shown  that  this  must  be  the  necessary  and  inevit- 
able results  of  all  experiments,  I  hold  that  Mr. 
Darwin's  hypothesis  would  be  utterly  shattered. 

But  has  this  been  done  ?  or  what  is  really  the 
state  of  the  case  ?  It  is  simply  that,  so  far  as  we 
have  gone  yet  with  our  breeding,  we  have  not  pro- 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    465 

duced  from  a  common  stock  two  breeds  which  are 
not  more  or  less  fertile  with  one  another. 

I  do  not  know  that  there  is  a  single  fact  which 
would  justify  any  one  in  saying  that  any  degree  of 
sterility  has  been  observed  between  breeds  abso- 
lutely known  to  have  been  produced  by  selective 
breeding  from  a  common  stock.  On  the  other 
hand,  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  a  single  fact 
which  can  justify  any  one  in  asserting  that  such 
sterility  cannot  be  produced  by  proper  experiment- 
ation. For  my  own  part,  I  see  every  reason  to 
believe  that  it  may,  and  will  be  so  produced.  For, 
as  Mr.  Darwin  has  very  properly  urged,  when  we 
consider  the  phenomena  of  sterility,  we  find  they 
are  most  capricious ;  we  do  not  know  what  it  is 
that  the  sterility  depends  on.  There  are  some 
animals  which  will  not  breed  in  captivity  ;  whether 
it  arises  from  the  simple  fact  of  their  being  shut 
up  and  deprived  of  their  liberty,  or  not,  we  do  not 
know,  but  they  certainly  will  not  breed.  What  an 
astounding  thing  this  is,  to  find  one  of  the  roost 
important  of  all  functions  annihilated  by  mere 
imprisonment ! 

So,  again,  there  are  cases  known  of  animals 
which  have  been  thought  by  naturalists  to  be  un- 
doubted species,  which  have  yielded  perfectly  fer- 
tile hybrids ;  while  there  are  other  species  which 
present  what  everybody  believes  to  be  varieties1 

1  And  as  I  conceive  with  very  good  reason  ;  but  if  any  objec- 
tor urges  that  we  cannot  prove  that  they  have  been  produced  by 


466  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

which  are  more  or  less  infertile  with  one  another. 
There  are  other  cases  which  are  truly  extraordi- 
nary ;  there  is  one,  for  example,  which  has  been 
carefully  examined, — of  two  kinds  of  sea- weed,  of 
which  the  male  element  of  the  one,  which  we  may 
call  A,  fertilises  the  female  element  of  the  other, 
B  ;  while  the  male  element  of  B  will  not  fertilise 
the  female  element  of  A ;  so  that,  while  the  for- 
mer experiment  seems  to  show  us  that  they  are 
varieties,  the  latter  leads  to  the  conviction  that 
they  are  species. 

When  we  see  how  capricious  and  uncertain  this 
sterility  is,  how  unknown  the  conditions  on  which 
it  depends,  I  say  that  we  have  no  right  to  affirm 
that  those  conditions  will  not  be  better  understood 
by  and  by,  and  we  have  no  ground  for  supposing 
that  we  may  not  be  able  to  experiment  so  as  to 
obtain  that  crucial  result  which  I  mentioned  just 
now.  So  that  though  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis 
does  not  completely  extricate  us  from  this  difficulty 
at  present,  we  have  not  the  least  right  to  say  it 
will  not  do  so. 

There  is  a  wide  gulf  between  the  thing  you  can- 
not explain  and  the  thing  that  upsets  you  alto- 
gether. There  is  hardly  any  hypothesis  in  this 
world  which  has  not  some  fact  in  connection  with 
it  which  has  not  been  explained,  but  that  is  a  very 
different  affair  to  a  fact  that  entirely  opposes  your 

artificial  or  natural  selection,  the  objection  must  be  admitted— 
ultra-sceptical  as  it  is.  But  in  science,  scepticism  is  a  duty. 


XI     PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    467 

hypothesis;  hi  this  case  all  you  can  say  is, 
that  your  hypothesis  is  in  the  same  position  as  a 
good  many  others. 

Now,  as  to  the  third  test,  that  there  are  no 
other  causes  competent  to  explain  the  phenomena, 
I  explained  to  you  that  one  should  be  able  to  say 
of  an  hypothesis,  that  no  other  known  causes  than 
those  supposed  by  it  are  competent  to  give  rise  to 
the  phenomena.  Here,  I  think,  Mr.  Darwin's 
view  is  pretty  strong.  I  really  believe  that  the 
alternative  is  either  Darwinism  or  nothing,  for  I 
do  not  know  of  any  rational  conception  or  theory 
of  the  organic  universe  which  has  any  scientific 
position  at  all  beside  Mr.  Darwin's.  I  do  not 
know  of  any  proposition  that  has  been  put  before 
us  with  the  intention  of  explaining  the  phenomena 
of  organic  nature,  which  has  in  its  favour  a 
thousandth  part  of  the  evidence  which  may  be  ad- 
duced in  favour  of  Mr.  Darwin's  views.  Whatever 
may  be  the  objections  to  his  views,  certainly  all 
other  theories  are  absolutely  out  of  court. 

Take  the  Lamarckian  hypothesis,  for  example. 
Lamarck  was  a  great  naturalist,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  went  the  right  way  to  work ;  he  argued 
from  what  was  undoubtedly  a  true  cause  of  some 
of  the  phenomena  of  organic  nature.  He  said  it 
is  a  matter  of  experience  that  an  animal  may  be 
modified  more  or  less  in  consequence  of  its  desires 
and  consequent  actions.  Thus,  if  a  man  exercise 
himself  as  a  blacksmith,  his  arms  will  become 


468  THE   CAUSES   OF   THE  xi 

strong  and  muscular ;  such  organic  modification  is 
a  result  of  this  particular  action  and  exercise. 
Lamarck  thought  that  by  a  very  simple  supposi- 
tion based  on  this  truth  he  could  explain  the  origin 
of  the  various  animal  species :  he  said,  for  ex- 
ample, that  the  short-legged  birds  which  live  on 
fish  had  been  converted  into  the  long-legged 
waders  by  desiring  to  get  the  fish  without  wetting 
their  feathers,  and  so  stretching  their  legs  more 
and  more  through  successive  generations.  If 
Lamarck  could  have  shown  experimentally  that 
even  races  of  animals  could  be  produced  in  this 
way,  there  might  have  been  some  ground  for  his 
speculations.  But  he  could  show  nothing  of  the 
kind,  and  his  hypothesis  has  pretty  well  dropped 
into  oblivion,  as  it  deserved  to  do.  I  said  in  an 
earlier  lecture  that  there  are  hypotheses  and  hy- 
potheses, and  when  people  tell  you  that  Mr.  Dar- 
win's strongly-based  hypothesis  is  nothing  but  a 
mere  modification  of  Lamarck's,  you  will  know 
what  to  think  of  their  capacity  for  forming  a 
judgment  on  this  subject. 

But  you  must  recollect  that  when  I  say  I  think 
it  is  either  Mr.  Darwin's  hypothesis  or  nothing ; 
that  either  we  must  take  his  view,  or  look  upon 
the  whole  of  organic  nature  as  an  enigma,  the 
meaning  of  which  is  wholly  hidden  from  us  ;  you 
must  understand  that  I  mean  that  I  accept  it 
provisionally,  in  exactly  the  same  way  as  1  accept 
any  other  hypothesis.  Men  of  science  do  not 


XI  PHENOMENA   OF   ORGANIC   NATURE          469 

pledge  themselves  to  creeds ;  they  are  bound  by 
articles  of  no  sort ;  there  is  not  a  single  belief  that 
it  is  not  a  bounden  duty  with  them  to  hold  with 
a  light  hand  and  to  part  with  cheerfully,  the 
moment  it  is  really  proved  to  be  contrary  to  any 
fact,  great  or  small.  And  if,  in  course  of  lime  I 
see  good  reasons  for  such  a  proceeding,  I  shall  have 
no  hesitation  in  coming  before  you,  and  pointing 
out  any  change  in  my  opinion  without  finding  the 
slightest  occasion  to  blush  for  so  doing.  So  I  say 
that  we  accept  this  view  as  we  accept  any  other, 
so  long  as  it  will  help  us,  and  we  feel  bound  to 
retain  it  only  so  long  as  it  will  serve  our  great 
purpose — the  improvement  of  Man's  estate  and 
the  widening  of  his  knowledge.  The  moment 
this,  or  any  other  conception,  ceases  to  be  useful 
for  these  purposes,  away  with  it  to  the  four  winds ; 
we  care  not  what  becomes  of  it ! 

But  to  say  truth,  although  it  has  been  my  busi- 
ness to  attend  closely  to  the  controversies  ro.used 
by  the  publication  of  Mr.  Darwin's  book,  T  think 
that  not  one  of  the  enormous  mass  of  objections 
and  obstacles  which  have  been  raised  is  of  any 
very  great  value,  except  that  sterilito  case  which 
I  brought  before  you  just  now.  All  the  rest  are 
misunderstandings  of  some  sort,  arising  either 
from  prejudice,  or  want  of  knowledge,  or  still 
more  from  want  of  patience  and  care  in  reading 
the  work. 

For  you  must  recollect  that  it  is  not  a  book  to 


470  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

be  read  with  as  much  ease  as  its  pleasant  style 
may  lead  you  to  imagine.  You  spin  through  it 
as  if  it  were  a  novel  the  first  time  you  read  it,  and 
think  you  know  all  about  it ;  the  second  time  you 
read  it  you  think  you  know  rather  less  about  it ; 
and  the  third  time,  you  are  amazed  to  find  how 
little  you  have  really  apprehended  its  vast  scope 
and  objects.  I  can  positively  say  that  I  never 
take  it  up  without  finding  in  it  some  new  view,  or 
light,  or  suggestion  that  I  have  not  noticed  before. 
That  is  the  best  characteristic  of  a  thorough  and 
profound  book ;  and  I  believe  this  feature  of  the 
"  Origin  of  Species  "  explains  why  so  many  per- 
sons have  ventured  to  pass  'judgment  and  criti- 
cisms upon  it  which  are  by  no  means  worth  the 
paper  they  are  written  on. 

Before  concluding  these  lectures  there  is  one 
point  to  which  I  must  advert — though,  as  Mr. 
Darwin  has  said  nothing  about  man  in  his  book, 
it  concerns  myself  rather  than  him  ; — for  I  have 
strongly  maintained  on  sundry  occasions  that  if 
Mr.  Darwin's  views  are  sound,  they  apply  as  much 
to  man  as  to  the  lower  mammals,  seeing  that  it  is 
perfectly  demonstrable  that  the  structural  differ- 
ences which  separate  man  from  the  apes  are  not 
greater  than  those  which  separate  some  apes 
from  others.  There  cannot  be  the  slightest  doubt 
in  the  world  that  the  argument  which  applies  to 
the  improvement  of  the  horse  from  an  earlier 
stock,  or  of  ape  from  ape,  applies  to  the  improve- 


XI      PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE    471 

ment  of  man  from  some  simpler  and  lower  stock 
than  man.  There  is  not  a  single  faculty — func- 
tional or  structural,  moral,  intellectual,  or  instinc- 
tive, there — is  no  faculty  whatever  that  is  not 
capable  of  improvement ;  there  is  no  faculty  what- 
soever which  does  not  depend  upon  structure,  and 
as  structure  tends  to  vary,  it  is  capable  of  being 
improved. 

Well,  I  have  taken  a  good  deal  of  pains  at 
various  times  to  prove  this,  and  I  have  endeav- 
oured to  meet  the  objections  of  those  who  main- 
tain, that  the  structural  differences  between  man 
and  the  lower  animals  are  of  so  vast  a  character 
and  enormous  extent,  that  even  if  Mr.  Darwin's 
views  are  correct,  you  cannot  imagine'  this  par- 
ticular modification  to  take  place.  It  is,  in  fact, 
an  easy  matter  to  prove  that,  so  far  as  structure  is 
concerned,  man  differs  to  no  greater  extent  from 
the  animals  which  are  immediately  below  him 
than  these  do  from  other  members  of  the  same 
order.  Upon  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  one  who 
estimates  more  highly  than  I  do  the  dignity  of 
human  nature,  and  the  width  of  the  gulf  in  in- 
tellectual and  moral  matters  which  lies  between 
man  and  the  whole  of  the  lower  creation. 

But  I  find  this  very  argument  brought  forward 
vehemently  by  some.  "  You  say  that  man  has 
proceeded  from  a  modification  of  some  lower 
animal,  and  you  take  pains  to  prove  that  the 
structural  differences  which  are  said  to  exist  in  his 

69 


472  THE   CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

brain  do  not  exist  at  all  and  you  teach  that  all 
functions,  intellectual,  moral,  and  others,  are  the 
expression  or  the  result,  in  the  long  run,  of  struc- 
tures, and  of  the  molecular  forces  which  they 
exert."  It  is  quite  true  that  I  do  so. 

"Well,  but,"  I  am  told  at  once,  somewhat 
triumphantly,  "  you  say  in  the  same  breath  that 
there  is  a  great  moral  and  intellectual  chasm 
between  man  and  the  lower  animals.  How  is 
this  possible  when  you  declare  that  moral  and  in- 
tellectual characteristics  depend  on  structure,  and 
yet  tell  us  that  there  is  no  such  gulf  between  the 
structure  of  man  and  that  of  the  lower  animals  ?  " 

I  think  that  objection  is  based  upon  a  miscon- 
ception of  the  real  relations  which  exist  between 
structure  and  function,  between  mechanism  and 
work.  Function  is  the  expression  of  molecular 
forces  and  arrangements  no  doubt;  but,  does  it 
follow  from  this,  that  variation  in  function  so 
depends  upon  variation  in  structure  that  the  former 
is  always  exactly  proportioned  to  the  latter  ?  If 
there  is  no  such  relation,  if  the  variation  in  func- 
tion which  follows  on  a  variation  in  structure  may 
be  enormously  greater  than  the  variation  of  the 
structure,  then,  you  see,  the  objection  falls  to  the 
ground. 

Take  a  couple  of  watches — made  by  the  same 
maker,  and  as  completely  alike  as  possible  ;  set 
them  upon  the  table,  and  the  function  of  each — 
which  is  its  rate  of  going — will  be  performed  in 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE         473 

the  same  manner,  and  you  shall  be  able  to  dis- 
tinguish no  difference  between  them  ;  but  let  me 
take  a  pair  of  pincers,  and  if  my  hand  is  steadj 
enough  to  do  it,  let  me  just  lightly  crush  together 
the  bearings  of  the  balance-wheel,  or  force  to  a 
slightly  different  angle  the  teeth  of  the  escape- 
ment of  one  of  them,  and  of  course  you  know  the 
immediate  result  will  be  that  the  watch,  so  treated, 
from  that  moment  will  cease  to  go.  But  what 
proportion  is  there  between  the  structural  altera- 
tion and  the  functional  result  ?  Is  it  not  perfectly 
obvious  that  the  alteration  is  of  the  minutest  kind, 
yet  that,  slight  as  it  is,  it  has  produced  an  infinite 
difference  in  the  performance  of  the  functions  of 
these  two  instruments  ? 

Well,  now,  apply  that  to  the  present  question. 
What  is  it  that  constitutes  and  makes  man  what 
he  is  ?  What  is  it  but  his  power  of  language — 
that  language  giving  him  the  means  of  recording 
his  experience — making  every  generation  some- 
what wiser  than  its  predecessor — more  in  accord- 
ance with  the  established  order  of  the  universe  ? 

What  is  it  but  this  power  of  speech,  of  record- 
ing experience,  which  enables  men  to  be  men — 
looking  before  and  after  and,  in  some  dim  sense, 
understanding  the  working  of  this  wondrous  uni- 
verse— and  which  distinguishes  man  from  the 
whole  of  the  brute  world  ?  I  say  that  this  func- 
tional difference  is  vast,  unfathomable,  and  truly 
infinite  in  its  consequences ;  and  I  say  at  the  same 


474  THE  CAUSES  OF  THE  xi 

time,  that  it  may  depend  upon  structural  differ- 
ences which  shall  be  absolutely  inappreciable  to 
us  with  our  present  means  of  investigation.  What 
is  this  very  speech  that  we  are  talking  about  ?  I 
am  speaking  to  you  at  this  moment,  but  if  you 
were  to  alter,  in  the  minutest  degree,  the  propor- 
tion of  the  nervous  forces  now  active  in  the  two 
nerves  which  supply  the  muscles  of  my  glottis,  I 
should  become  suddenly  dumb.  The  voice  is  pro- 
duced only  so  long  as  the  vocal  chords  are  parallel ; 
and  these  are  parallel  only  so  long  as  certain 
muscles  contract  with  exact  equality  ;  and  that 
again  depends  on  the  equality  of  action  of 
those  two  nerves  I  spoke  of.  So  that  a  change  of 
the  minutest  kind  in  the  structure  of  one  of  these 
nerves,  or  in  the  structure  of  the  part  in  which  it 
originates,  or  of  the  supply  of  blood  to  that  part, 
or  of  one  of  the  muscles  to  which  it  is  distributed, 
might  render  all  of  us  dumb.  But  a  race  of  dumb 
men,  deprived  of  all  communication  with  those 
who  could  speak,  would  be  little  indeed  removed 
from  the  brutes.  And  the  moral  and  intellectual 
difference  between  them  and  ourselves  would  be 
practically  infinite,  though  the  naturalist  should 
not  be  able  to  find  a  single  shadow  of  even  specific 
structural  difference. 

But  let  me  dismiss  this  question  now,  and,  in 
conclusion,  let  me  say  that  you  may  go  away  with 
it  as  my  mature  conviction,  that  Mr.  Darwin's 
work  is  the  greatest  contribution  which  has  been 


XI  PHENOMENA  OF  ORGANIC  NATURE  475 

made  to  biological  science  since  the  publication  of 
the  "  Regne  Animal "  of  Cuvier,  and  since  that 
of  the  "  History  of  Development,"  of  Von  Baer. 
I  believe  that  if  you  strip  it  of  its  theoretical  part 
it  still  remains  one  of  the  greatest  encyclopedias 
of  biological  doctrine  that  any  one  man  ever 
brought  forth ;  and  I  believe  that,  if  you  take  it 
as  the  embodiment  of  an  hypothesis,  it  is  destined 
to  be  the  guide  of  biological  and  psychological 
speculation  for  the  next  three  or  four  genera- 
tions. 


END    OF  VOL.  H. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


NEW  EDITION  OF  PROF.  HUXLEY'S  ESSAYS. 

/COLLECTED   ESSAYS.     By  THOMAS  H.  HUXLEY. 

Vx  New  complete  edition,  with  revisions,  the  Essays  being  grouped 
according  to  general  subject.  In  nine  volumes,  a  new  Intro- 
duction accompanying  each  volume.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.25  per 
volume. 

VOL.  I.— METHOD  AND   RESULTS. 

VOL.  II.-DARWINIANA. 

VOL.  III.-SCIENCE   AND   EDUCATION. 

VOL.  IV.— SCIENCE  AND   HEBREW  TRADITION. 

VOL.  V.— SCIENCE  AND   CHRISTIAN   TRADITION. 

VOL.  VI.— HUME. 

VOL.  VII.— MAN'S   PLACE   IN   NATURE. 

VOL.  VIII.— DISCOURSES,   BIOLOGICAL  AND  GEOLOGICAL. 

VOL.  IX.— EVOLUTION  AND  ETHICS,  AND  OTHER   ESSAYS. 

"  Mr.  Huxley  has  covered  a  vast  variety  of  topics  during  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century.  It  gives  one  an  agreeable  surprise  to  look  over  the  tables  of  contents  and 
note  the  immense  territory  which  he  has  explored.  To  read  these  books  carefully 
and  studiously  is  to  become  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  most  advanced  thought 
on  a  large  number  of  topics." — New  York  Herald. 

"  The  series  will  be  a  welcome  one.  There  are  few  writings  on  the  more  abstruse 
problems  of  science  better  adapted  to  reading  by  the  general  public,  and  in  this  form 
the  books  will  be  well  in  the  reach  of  the  investigator.  .  .  .  The  revisions  are  the  last 
expected  to  be  made  by  the  author,  and  his  introductions  are  none  of  earlier  date 
than  a  few  months  ago  [1893!,  so  they  may  be  considered  his  final  and  most  authorita- 
tive utterances." — Chicago  Times. 

"  It  was  inevitable  that  his  essays  should  be  called  for  in  a  completed  form,  and  they 
will  be  a  source  of  delight  and  profit  to  all  who  read  them.  He  has  always  commanded 
a  hearing,  and  as  a  master  of  the  literary  style  in  writing  scientific  essays  he  is  worthy 
of  a  place  among  the  great  English  essayists  of  the  day.  This  edition  of  his  essays 
will  be  widely  read,  and  gives  his  scientific  work  a  permanent  form."— Bo  start  Herald. 

"  A  man  whose  brilliancy  is  so  constant  as  that  of  Prof.  Huxley  will  always  com- 
mand  readers ;  and  the  utterances  which  are  here  collected  are  not  the  least  in  weight 
and  luminous  beauty  of  those  with  which  the  author  has  long  delighted  the  reading 
world."— Philadelphia  Press. 

"  The  connected  arrangement  of  the  essays  which  their  reissue  permits  brings  into 
filler  relief  Mr.  Huxley's  masterly  powers  of  exposition.  Sweeping  the  subject-matter 
clear  of  all  logomachies(  he  Jets  the  light  of  common  day  fall  upon  it.  He  shows  that 
the  place  of  hypothesis  in  science,  as  the  starting  point  of  verification  of  the  phenomena 
to  be  explained,  is  but  an  extension  of  the  assumptions  which  underlie  actions  in  every- 
day affairs;  and  that  the  method  of  scientific  investigation  is  only  the  method  which 
rules  the  ordinary  business  of  life." — London  Chronicle. 


New  York :   D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


D.  APPLETON  &   CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


MISCELLANEOUS   WORKS   OF   HERBERT   SPENCER. 

^OCIAL  STATICS.      New  and  revised   edition,   in- 
fc-J     eluding  "  The  Man  versus  The  State,"   a   series  of  essays  on 

political    tendencies    heretofore    published    separately.      I2mo. 

420  pages.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

CONTENTS. — Happiness  as  an  Immediate  Aim. — Unguided  Expediency. — The 
Moral  Sense  Doctrine.— What  is  Morality  ?— The  Evanescence  [?  Diminution]  of  Evil. 
— Greatest  Happiness  must  be  sought  indirectly.  — Derivation  of  a  First  Principle. — 
Secondary  Derivation  of  a  First  Principle. — First  Principle.— Application  of  the  First 
Principle.— The  Right  of  Property.— Socialism.— The  Right  of  Property  in  Ideas.— 
The  Rights  of  Women. —The  Rights  of  Children.— Political  Rights.— The  Constitution 
of  the  State.— The  Duty  of  the  State.— The  Limit  of  State-Duty.— The  Regulation  of 
Commerce.— Religious  Establishments. — Poor- Laws. — National  Education.  -Govcrn- 

General  Considerations.— The  New  Toryism.— The   Coming  Slavery.— The 'sins  of 
Legislators. — The  Great  Political  Superstition. 

"  Mr.  Spencer  has  thoroughly  studied  the  issues  which  are  behind  the  social  and 
political  life  of  our  own  time,  not  exactly  those  issues  which  are  discussed  in  Parliament 
or  in  Congress,  but  the  principles  of  all  modern  government,  which  are  slowly  chang- 
ing in  response  to  the  broader  industrial  and  general  development  of  human  experience. 
One  will  obtain  no  suggestions  out  of  this  book  for  guiding  a  political  party  or  carrying 
a  point  in  economics,  but  he  will  find  the  principles  of  sociology,  as  they  pertain  to  the 
whole  of  life,  better  stated  in  these  pages  than  he  can  find  them  expressed  anywhere 
else.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  this  work  is  important  and  fresh  and  vitalising.  It  goes 
constantly  to  the  foundation  of  things." — Boston  Herald, 

TpDUCATION ;     Intellectual,   Moral,    and  Physical 
•*—*     I2mo.     Paper,  50  cents  ;  cloth,  $1.25. 

CONTENTS:  What  Knowledge  is  of  most  Worth? — Intellectual  Education. — Moral 
Education. — Physical  Education. 


T 


HE  STUDY  OF  SOCIOLOGY.    The  fifth  volume 
in  the  International  Scientific  Series.     I2mo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

CONTENTS:  Our  Need  of  it. — Is  there  a  Social  Science?— Nature  of  the  Social 
Science.—  Difficulties  of  the  Social  Science.— Objective  Difficulties.— Subjective  Diffi- 
culties, Intellectual. — Subjective  Difficulties.  Emotional. — The  Educational  Bias. — The 
Bias  of  Patriotism.— The  Class- Bias. —The  Political  Bias.— The  Theological  Bias.— 
Discipline — Preparation  in  Biology. — Preparation  in  Psychology. — Conclusion. 

•J^HE  INADEQUACY  OF  "NATURAL  SELEC- 

-»         TION."     I2mo.     Paper,  30  cents. 

This  essay,  in  which  Prof.  Weismann's  theories  are  criticised,  is  reprinted 
from  the  Contemporary  Review,  and  comprises  a  forcible  presentation  of 
Mr.  Spencer's  views  upon  the  general  subject  indicated  in  the  title. 


New  York :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


NEW  EDITION   OF    SPENCER'S   ESSAYS. 

'SSAYS:  Scientific,  Political,  and  Speculative.  By 
HERBERT  SPENCER.  A  new  edition,  uniform  with  Mr.  Spencer's 
other  works,  including  Seven  New  Essays.  Three  volumes 
I2mo,  1,460  pages,  with  full  Subject-Index  of  twenty-four  pages. 
Cloth.  $6.00. 

CONTENTS   OF  VOLUME  I. 


The  Development  Hypothesis. 

Progress :  its  Law  and  Cause. 

Transcendental  Physiology. 

The  Nebular  Hypothesis. 

Illogical  Geology. 

Bain  on  the  Emotions  and  the  WilL 


The  Social  Organism. 

The  Origin  of  Animal  Worship. 

Morals  and  Moral  Sentiments 

The  Comparative  Psychology  of  Man. 

Mr.  Martineau  on  Evolution. 

The  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution.* 


CONTENTS   OF 

The  Genesis  of  Science 

The  Classification  of  the  Sciences. 

Reasons  for  dissenting  from  the  Phi- 
losophy of  M.  Comte. 

On  Laws  in  General,  and  the  Order 
of  their  Discovery. 

The  Valuation  of  Evidence. 

What  is  Electricity  ? 

Mill  versus  Hamilton — The  Test  of 
Truth. 

CONTENTS   OF 

Manners  and  Fashion. 
Railway   Morals  and    Railway 

Policy. 

The  Morals  of  Trade. 
Prison-Ethics. 
The  Ethics  of  Kant. 
Absolute  Political  Ethics. 
Over-Legislation. 
Representative  Government — 

What  is  it  good  for  ? 


*  Also  published  separately, 
t  Also  published  separately. 
\  Also  published  separately. 


izmo. 

izmo. 
izmo. 


VOLUME   II. 

Replies  to  Criticisms. 

Prof.  Green's  Explanations. 

The  Philosophy  of  Style,  t 

Use  and  Beauty. 

The  Sources  of  Architectural  Types 

Gracefulness. 

Personal  Beauty. 

The  Origin  and  Function  of  Music. 

The  Physiology  of  Laughter. 

VOLUME   III. 

State-Tampering  with   Money  and 

Banks 
Parliamentary  Reform :  the  Dangers 

and  the  Safeguards. 
"  The  Collective  Wisdom." 
Political  Fetichism. 
Specialized  Administration 
From  Freedom  to  Bondage. 
The  Americans.  J 
Index. 

Cloth,  75  cents. 
Cloth,  50  cents. 
Paper,  10  cents. 


New  York  :  I).  AFPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


T 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

HE  SYNTHETIC  PHILOSOPHY  OF  HER- 
BERT SPENCER.  In  nine  volumes.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $2.00 
per  volume.  The  titles  of  the  several  volumes  are  as  follows  ; 

(i.)  FIRST  PRINCIPLES. 

I.  The  Unknowable.  II.  Laws  of  the  Knowable. 

(2.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  BIOLOGY.    Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Biology.  II.  The  Inductions  of  Biology. 

III.  The  Evolution  of  Life. 
(3.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  BIOLOGY.      Vol.11. 

IV.  Morphological  Development.  V.  Physiological  Development. 

VI.  Laws  of  Multiplication, 
(4.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.    Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Psychology.  III.  General  Synthesis. 

II.  The  Inductions  of  Psychology.  IV.  Special  Synthesis. 

V.  Physical  Synthesis. 
(5.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PSYCHOLOGY.    Vol.  II. 

VI.  Special  Analysis.  VIII.  Congruities. 

VII.  General  Analysis.  IX.  Corollaries. 

(6.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY.    Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Sociology.  II.  The  Inductions  of  Sociology. 

III.  The  Domestic  Relations. 
(7.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY.    Vol.  II. 

IV.  Ceremonial  Institutions.  V.  Political  Institutions. 

VI.  Ecclesiastical  Institutions. 
(8.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  SOCIOLOGY.    Vol.  III. 

(9.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ETHICS.    Vol.  I. 

I.  The  Data  of  Ethics.  II.  The  Inductions  of  Ethics. 

III.  The  Ethics  of  Individual  Life. 
(10.)  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  ETHICS.     Vol.  II. 
IV.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life:   Justice. 
V.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life :    Negative  Beneficence. 
VI.  The  Ethics  of  Social  Life:   Positive  Beneficence. 

T\ESCRIPTIVE    SOCIOLOGY.      A    Cyclopedia    of 

-t--'    Social  Facts.     Representing  the  Constitution   of  Every  Type 

and  Grade  of  Human  Society,  Past  and  Present,  Stationary  and 

Progressive.    By  HERBERT  SPENCER.    Eight  Nos.,  Royal  Folio. 

No.         I.  ENGLISH $4  oo 

No.       II.  MEXICANS,  CENTRAL  AMERICANS,  CHIBCHAS,  and  PE- 
RUVIANS       4  oo 

No.     III.  LOWEST  RACES,  NEGRITO  RACES,  and  MALAYO-POLY- 

NF.SIAN    RACES 

No.      IV.  AFRICAN   RACES 

No.       V.  ASIATIC  RACES 

No.      VI.  AMERICAN  RACES 

No.    VII.  HEBREWS  and  PHOENICIANS 

No.  VIII.  FRENCH  (Double  Number) 


New  York :  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

trTTHE  ICE  AGE  IN  NORTH  AMERICA,  and  its 

-*•  Bearings  upon  the  Antiquity  of  Man.  By  G.  FREDERICK 
WRIGHT,  D.D.,  LL.  D.,  F.G.  S.A.,  Professor  in  Oberlin 
Theological  Seminary ;  Assistant  on  the  United  States  Geo- 
logical Survey.  With  an  appendix  on  "The  Probable  Cause 
of  Glaciation,"  by  WARREN  UPHAM,  F.  G.  S.  A.,  Assistant  on 
the  Geological  Surveys  of  New  Hampshire,  Minnesota,  and 
the  United  States.  New  and  enlarged  edition.  With  150  Maps 
and  Illustrations.  8vo,  625  pages,  and  Index.  Cloth,  $5.00. 

''Not  a  novel  in  all  the  list  of  this  year's  publications  has  in  it  any  pages  of  more 
thrilling  interest  than  can  be  found  in  this  book  by  Professor  Wright.  There  is  noth- 
ing pedantic  in  the  narrative,  and  the  most  serious  themes  and  startling  discoveries  are 
treated  with  such  charming  naturalness  and  simplicity  that  boys  and  girls,  as  well  as 
their  seniors,  will  be  attracted  to  the  story,  and  r.nd  it  difficult  to  lay  it  aside." — Nnu 
York  Journal  pf  Commerce. 

"  One  of  the  most  absorbing  and  interesting  of  all  the  recent  issues  in  the  depart- 
ment of  popular  science." — Chicago  Herald. 

"Though  his  subject  is  a  very  deep  one,  his  style  is  so  very  unaffected  and  per- 
spicuous  that  even  the  unscientific  reader  can  peruse  it  with  intelligence  and  profit.  In 
reading  such  a  book  we  are  led  almost  to  wonder  that  so  much  that  is  scientific  can  be 
put  in  language  so  comparatively  simple." — Xew  York  Observer. 

"The  author  has  seen  with  his  own  eyes  the  most  important  phenomena  of  the  Ice 
age  on  this  continent  from  Maine  to  Alaska.  In  the  work  itself,  elementary  description 
is  combined  with  a  broad,  scientific,  and  philosophic  method,  without  abandoning  for 
a  moment  the  purely  scientific  character.  Professor  Wright  has  contrived  to  give  the 
whole  a  philosophical  direction  which  lends  interest  and  inspiration  to  it,  and  which  in 
the  chapters  on  Man  and  the  Glacial  Period  rises  to  something  like  dramatic  intensity." 
— The  Independent. 

"...  To  the  great  advance  that  has  been  made  in  late  years  in  the  accuracy  and 
cheapness  of  processes  of  photographic  reproduction  is  due  a  further  signal  advantage 
that  Dr.  Wright's  work  possesses  over  his  predecessors'.  He  has  thus  been  able  to 
illustrate  most  of  the  natural  phenomena  to  which  he  refers  by  views  taken  in  the  field, 
many  of  which  have  been  generously  loaned  by  the  United  Stairs  Geological  Survey, 
in  some  cases  from  unpublished  material ;  and  he  has  admirably  supplemented  them  by 
numerous  maps  and  diagrams." — The  Nation. 


M 


'AN  AND  THE  GLACIAL  PERIOD.  By  G. 
FREDERICK  WRIGHT,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.,  author  of  "  The  Ice 
Age  in  North  America,"  "  Logic  of  Christian  Evidences,"  etc. 
International  Scientific  Series.  With  numerous  Illustrations. 
I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.75. 

"  It  may  be  described  in  a  word  as  the  best  summary  of  scientific  conclusions  con- 
cerning the  question  of  man's  antiquity  as  affected  by  his  known  relations  to  geological 
time.  "—Philadelphia.  Pros. 

"  The  earlier  chapters  describing  glacial  action,  and  the  traces  of  it  in  North  Amer- 
ica-especially  the  defining  of  its  limits,  such  as  the  terminal  moraine  of  the  great 
movement  itself  -are  of  great  interest  and  value.  The  maps  and  diagrams  are  of  much 
assistance  in  enabling  the  reader  to  grasp  the  vast  extent  of  the  movement"-  London 
Spectator.  

New  York:  I).  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


o 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


RICHARD   A.   PROCTOR'S   WORKS. 

r\THER  WORLDS   THAN  OURS:    The  Plurality 
\*J    of   Worlds,   Studied  under  the  Light  of  Recent  Scientific  Re- 
searches.     By  RICHARD  ANTHONY  PROCTOR.     With  Illustra- 
tions, some  colored.     I2mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 

CONTENTS.— Introduction.— What  the  Earth  teaches  us.— What  we  learn  from 
the  Sun. — The  Inferior  Planets. — Mars,  the  Miniature  of  our  Earth. — Jupiter,  the 
Giant  of  the  Solar  System. — Saturn,  the  Ringed  World. — Uranus  and  Neptune,  the 
Arctic  Planets.— The  Moon  and  other  Satellites.— Meteors  and  Comets  :  their  Office 
in  the  Solar  System.— Other  Suns  than  Ours.— Of  Minor  Stars,  and  of  the  Distri- 
bution of  Stars  in  Space.— The  Nebulae:  are  they  External  Galaxies  ?— Supervision 
and  Control. 

UR  PLACE  AMONG  INFINITIES.  A  Series 
of  Essays  contrasting  our  Little  Abode  in  Space  and  Time  with 
the  Infinities  around  us.  To  which  are  added  Essays  on  the 
Jewish  Sabbath  and  Astrology.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.75. 

CONTENTS. — Past  and  Future  of  the  Earth. — Seeming  Wastes  in  Nature.— New 
Theory  of  Life  in  other  Worlds.-A  Missing  Comet. -The  Lost  Comet  and  its  Me- 
teor  Train.— Jupiter.— Saturn  and  its  System.— A  Giant  Sun.— The  Star  Depths.— 
Star  Gauging.— Saturn  and  the  Sabbath  of  the  Jews.— Thoughts  on  Astrology. 

rTHE   EXPANSE    OF    HEAVEN.       A  Series  of 
•*•       Essays  on  the  Wonders  of   the  Firmament.      I2mo.      Cloth. 

$2.00. 

CONTENTS. — A  Dream  that  was  not  all  a  Dream. — The  Sun. — The  Queen  of 
Night.— The  Evening  Star.— The  Ruddy  Planet.— Life  in  the  Ruddy  Planet.— The 
Prince  of  Planets.— Jupiter's  Family  of  Moons.— The  Ring-Girdled  Planet.— New- 
ton and  the  Law  of  the  Universe.— The  Discovery  of  Two  Giant  Planets.— The 
Lost  Comet. — Visitants  from  the  Star  Depths. — Whence  come  the  Comets  ? — The 
Comet  Families  of  the  Giant  Planets. — The  Earth's  Journey  through  Showers. — 
How  the  Planets  Grew.— Our  Daily  Light.— The  Flight  of  Light.— A  Cluster  of 
Suns.— Worlds  ruled  by  Colored  Suns.— The  King  of  Suns.— Four  Orders  of  Suns. 
—The  Depths  of  Space.— Charting  the  Star  Depths.— The  Star  Depths  Astir  with 
Life.— The  Drifting  Stars.— The  Milky  Way. 

"HE  MOON :  Her  Motions,  Aspect,  Scenery,  and  Phys- 
ical Conditions.  With  Three  Lunar  Photographs,  Map,  and 
many  Plates,  Charts,  etc.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

CONTENTS.— The  Moon's  Distance,  Size,  and  Mass.— The  Moon's  Motions.— 
The  Moon's  Changes  of  Aspect,  Rotation,  Libration,  etc.— Study  of  the  Moon's 
Surface. — Lunar  Celestial  Phenomena. — Condition  of  the  Moon's  Surface.— Index 
to  the  Map  of  the  Moon. 

IGHT  SCIENCE  FOR  LEISURE  HOURS.    A 

Series  of  Familiar  Essays  on  Scientific  Subjects,  Natural  Phe- 
nomena, etc.     I2mo.     Cloth,  $1.75. 


T 


L 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York. 


F 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

EVOLUTION  SERIES,  NOS.  35  TO  48. 
'ACTORS  IN  AMERICAN  CIVILIZATION: 
STUDIES  IN  APPLIED  SOCIOLOGY.  Popular  Lectures 
and  Discussions  before  the  BROOKLYN  ETHICAL  ASSOCIATION. 
I2mo.  Cloth,  $2.00.  Separate  Lectures,  in  Pamphlet  Form, 
10  cents  each. 

This  volume  is  uniform  with  the  two  previous  volumes  of  the 
series,  entitled  respectively  "Evolution  in  Science  and  Art"  and 
"  Man  and  the  State." 

CONTENTS. 

35.  The  Nation's  Place  in  Civilization.      By  CHARLES  DE  GARMO, 

Ph.  D.,  President  of  Swarthmore  College. 

36.  Natural  Factors  in  American    Civilization.      By  Rev.   JOHN  C. 

KlMBALL. 

37.  What  America  Owes  to  the  Old  World.     By  A.  EMERSON  PALMER. 

38.  War  an!  Progress.     By  Dr.  LEWIS  G.  JANES. 

39.  Interstate  Commetce.     By  ROBERT  W.  TAYLER. 

40.  Foreign  Commerce.     By  Hon.  WILLIAM  J.  COOMBS. 

41.  The  Social  and  Political  Status  of  Woman.      By   Rev.   JOHN  W. 

CHAD  WICK. 

42.  The  Economic  Position  of  Woman.      By   Miss    CAROLINE    B.    LB 

Row. 

43.  Evolution  of  Penal  Methods  and  Institutions.      By  JAMES  Mc- 

KEEN. 

44.  Evolution  of  'Charities  and  Charitable   Institutions.       By    Prof. 

AMOS  G.  WARNER,  Ph.  D.,  Superintendent  of  Public  Charities, 
Washington,  D.  C. 

4-5.  The  Drink  Problem.      By  T.  D.  CROTHERS,  M.  D.,  Editor  of  the 
"  Quarterly  Journal  of  Inebriety." 

46.  The  Labor  Problem.      By  Rev.  NICHOLAS  P.  GILMAN,  Editor  of 

the  "  New  World." 

47.  Political  Aspects  of  the  Labor  Problem.     By  JEREMIAH  W.  SUL- 

LIVAN. 

48.  The  Philosophy  of  History.      By  Rev.  E.   P.  POWELL,  Author  of 

"Our  Heredity  from  God,"  etc. 

"  One  can  hardly  speak  too  highly  of  the  work  which  U  being  done  by  the 
BROOKLYN  ETHICAL  Associ  \TIOV  Its  phn  is  to  bring  within  definite  compass  and 
knowledge  some  of  the  largest  subjects  which  tan  occupy  the  minds  of  thoughtful 
men.  It  has  found  students  and  thinkers  who  nre  equal  to  this  task,  and  here  we  I  are 
some  of  the  best  work  on  subjects  of  the  highest  meaning  that  has  been  done  by 
Americans. "— Btston  Herald. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


E 


D.   APPLETON  &   CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 

EVOLUTION   SERIES,  NOS.  i  TO  17. 

Popular  Lectures  and  Discussions  before  the  Brooklyn  Ethical  Association. 

VOLUTION   IN    SCIENCE,    PHILOSOPHY, 

AND  ART.     With  3  Portraits.     Large  I2mo.     Cloth,  $2.00. 

CONTENTS. 


A  If  red  Russ'l  Wallace.     By  EDWARD  D. 
COPE,  Ph.D. 
Ernst    Haeckel.        By    THADDEUS    B. 
WAKEMAN. 
The  Scientific  Method.     By  FRANCIS  E. 
ABBOTT,  Ph.D. 
Herbert  Spencer's  Synthetic  Philosophy. 
By  BENJAMIN  F.  UNDERWOOD. 
Evolution  of  Chemistry.     By  ROBERT  G. 
ECCI.ES,  M.  D. 
Evolution    of   Electric    and  .  Magnetic 
Physics.       By    ARTHUR    E.     KEN- 
NELLY. 
Evolution    of  Botany.       By    FRED    J. 
WUI.I.ING,  Ph.  G. 
Zco.'ogy  as   related  to   Evolution.       By 
Rev.  JOHN  C.  KIMBALL. 
"  The  addresses  include  some  of  the  mos 
lislied  in  America.     They  are  all  upon  impo 
and  are  delivered  for  the  most  part  by  high 

Form  and  Color  in  Nature.      By  WIL- 
LIAM POTTS. 
Optics  as  related  to  Evolution.     By  L.  A. 
W.  ALLEMAN,  M.D. 
Evolution  of  A  rt.     By  JOHN  A.  TAYLOR. 
Evolution   of  A  rchitecture.        By   Rev. 
JOHN  W.  CHADWICK. 
-ttion  of  Sculpture.    By  Prof.  THOMAS 
DAVIDSON. 
Evolution  of  Painting.     By  FORREST  P. 

RL'NDELL. 

Evolution    of   Music.       By  Z.    SIDNEY 
SAMPSON. 
Life  as    a   Fine   Art.        By   LEWIS    G. 
JANFS,  M.  D. 
The  Doctrine  of  Evolution  :  its  Scope  and 
Influence.     By  Prof.  JOHN  FISKE. 
t  important  presentations  and  epitomes  pub- 
rtant  subjects,  are  prepared  with  great  care, 
y  eminent  authorities."  —  Public  Opinion. 

M 


EVOLUTION    SERIES,  NOS.  18  TO  34. 

AN  AND    THE    STATE.     Studies   in  Applied 
Sociology.     With  Index.     Large  I2mo.     Cloth,  $2  oo. 


The  Duty  of  a   Public   Spirit.      By  E. 
BENJAMIN  ANDREWS,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. 


of  Applied  Sociology. 
T  G.  ECCLES,  M.  D. 


By 


The   Study  of  A 

ROBER 
Representative  Government.     By  EDWIN 

D.  MEAD. 
Suffrage  and  the  Ballot.     By  DANIEL  S. 

REMSEN. 
The  Land  Problem.     By  Prof.  OTIS  T. 

MASON. 
The  Problem  of  City  Government.      By 

Dr.  LEWIS  G.  JANES. 
Taxation    and    Revenue:      The    Free- 

Trade     Vie-w.        By     THOMAS     G. 

SHEARMAN. 
Taxation   and    Revenue  :    The    Protec- 

tionist   Vie-w.       By    Prof.    GEOKGE 

GUNTON. 


CONTENTS. 

The  Monetary  Problem.      By  WILLIAM 

•  POTTS. 
The  Immigration  Problem.     By  Z.  SID- 

NHY  SAMPSON. 
Evolution   of  the  Afric- American.      By 

Rev.  SAMUEL  J.  BARROWS. 
The   Race  Problem   in   the   South.      By 

Prof.  JOSEPH  LE  CONTE. 
Education   and  Citizenship.       By   Rev. 

JOHN  W.  CHADWICK 
The  Democratic  Party.     By  EDWARD  M. 


The  Republican  Party.     By  Hon.   Ros- 

WELL   G.    HORR. 

The  Independent  in  Politics.      By  JOHN 

A.  TAYIOR. 
Moral  Questions  in  Politics.       By  Rev. 

JOHN  C.  KIMBALL. 


"These  studies  in  applied  sociology  are  exceptionally  interesting  in  their  field."  — 

"Will  command  the  attention  of  the  progressive  student  of  politics."  —  Pittsburg 
Chronicle-Telegraph. 

Separate  Lectures  from  either  volume,  10  cents  each. 


New  York:  D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


E 


D.  APPLETON  &  CO.'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


MEMOIRS  OF  PROF.  E.  L.  YOU  MANS. 

LIVINGSTON  YOU  MANS,  Inter- 
preter of  Science  for  the  People.  A  Sketch  of  his  Life,  with 
Selections  from  his  Published  Writings,  and  Extracts  from  his 
Correspondence  with  Spencer,  Huxley,  Tyndail,  and  others. 
By  JOHN  FISKE.  With  Two  Portraits.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $2.00. 

"Whether  as  a  memorial  ot  a  noteworthy  man,  or  as  a  record  ot  a  most  important 
phase  of  intellectual  life  in  our  own  time,  the  volume  is  entirely  admirable,  and  must 
be  given  a  high  place  in  the  honorable  list  of  recent  biography." — Philadelphia. 
Times. 

"  His  life  was  at  once  inspiring  and  interesting.  His  career  gave  to  manhood  in 
America  an  ornament  as  well  as  a  potent  example.  While  he  lived,  he  helped  to 
enrich  thousands  of  lives.  Now  that  he  is  gone,  Prof,  t  iske's  beautiful  biography 
not  only  shows  us  how  noble  the  man  himself  was,  but  how  great  was  the  public 
loss,  and  how  precious  must  remain  the  possession  of  such  a  memory." — i\ew  York 
Times. 

"  It  was  eminently  proper  that  the  biography  of  Mr.  Youmans  should  be  written, 
and  certainly  there  could  not  have  been  chosen  a  fitter  man  than  Mr.  Fiske  to  write 
it  An  acquaintance  daring  back  thirty  years  is  itself  a  qualification,  and  when  to  this 
are  added  Mr.  Fiske's  ability  and  the  lucid  method  which  characterizes  his  work,  the 
elements  for  a  satisfactory  memoir  are  all  present." — Philadelphia  Bul.etin. 

"  To  enumerate  Youmans's  achievements  in  the  dissemination  and  interpretation 
of  scientific  truth  is  to  sum  up  the  reco.-d  of  an  epoch  from  the  view-point  of  the 
gradual  enlightenment  of  the  American  people.  When  Mr.  Fiske  reminds  us  that 
the  discovery  and  propagation  of  truth  are  functions  seldom  united  in  one  person,  and 
that  science,  like  religion,  must  have  its  apostles,  he  speaks  as  one  having  experience 
and  authority  ;  and  no  one  will  dispute  his  competence  to  define  and  r.pp'.aud  the 
services  which  his  friend  rendered  in  the  capacity  of  a  breaker  of  the  bread  of  science 
to  the  multitude."— Mew  York  Sun. 

"  The  selection  of  Prof.  John  Fiske  as  the  biographer  of  the  late  Prof.  Youmans 
was  the  best  thing  that  could  be  madi.  Prof.  Youmans  has  done  more  for  the  dis- 
semination of  scientific  information,  and  the  cultivation  of  a  taste  for  such  knowledge, 
than  any  other  American  of  his  day."  —  Cleveland  Plain  Dealer. 

"  We  shall  not  be  misunderstood  as  agreeing  with  all  the  views  recorded  here  by 
Prof.  Youmans,  from  whom  we  were  often  compelled  to  differ  while  he  lived,  when  we 
say  that  we  have  read  the  book  with  great  interest,  and  are  thankful  that  one  who 
truly  and  unselfishly  labored  in  the  cause  of  popular  science  has  so  worthy  a  memo- 
rial. "-New  York  Observer. 

"  He  had  the  broad  democratic  spirit,  and  the  absolute  unselfishness  which  it 
reveals  at  every  moment  and  in  every  act  of  his  life ;  and  Mr.  Fiske  has  written  a  biog- 
raphywhicli  is  tender  and  true,  and  rich  and  strong.  To  it  are  appended  some  of  his 
writings  which  have  a  fitting  place  here,  and  fully  illustrate  his  mental  gifts  and  con- 
victions."— Boston  Herald. 

"  Edward  Livingston  Youmans  was  a  remarkable  character,  and  the  world  could 
ill  afford  to  lack  a  history  of  his  life.  Fortunately,  the  tvst  biographer  possible  has 
undertaken  to  write  that  histoty,  and  all  thoughtful  readers  may  rejoice  thereat ;  for 
John  Fiske  came  to  this  task  well  fitted  in  every  way  by  his  intimate  personal  acquaint- 
ance with  Mr.  Youmans,  extending  through  many  years." — Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 

"  Prof.  John  Fiske  has  performed  a  labor  of  love  for  the  friend  whose  name  is  it< 
title,  and  one  of  whose  closest  intimates  he  was.  The  volume  is  a  good  example  of 
friendly  but  not  unwholesomcly  laudatory  biography."—  Botton  CoHgregationalut. 


New  York:  U.  APFLETON  &  CO.,  72  Fifth  Avenue. 


APPLETONS'  LIBRARY  LISTS. 


Libraries,  •whether  for  the  school,  home,  or  the  public  at  large,  are 
among  the  most  important  and  wide-reaching  educational  factors  in  the 
advancement  of  civilization.  Modern  intellectual  activity,  keeping  pace 
with  modern  invention,  has  added  to  the  earlier  stores  oi  literature  myriads 
of  books,  and  a  still  greater  mass  of  reading  matter  in  other  tonns.  Unfor- 
tunately, much  of  the  material  put  into  print  is  not  of  an  educational  or 
elevating  character.  It  is  important,  then,  in  the  selection  of  books  for 
public  use,  especially  for  the  young,  that  great  care  be  exercised  to  secure 
only  such  kinds  of  reading  as  will  be  wholesome,  instructive,  and  intrinsic- 
ally valuable. 

For  more  than  fifty  years  Messrs.  D.  APPLETON  &  Co.  have  been  en- 
gaged in  the  publication  of  the  choicest  productions  from  the  pens  of  dis- 
tinguished authors  of  the  past  and  present,  of  both  Europe  and  America, 
and  their  catalogue  of  books  now  comprises  several  thousand  volumes,  em- 
bracing every  department  of  knowledge.  Classified  lists  of  these  publica- 
tions have  been  prepared,  affording  facilities  for  a  judicious  selection  of 
books  covering  trie  whole  range  of  LITERATURE,  SCIENCE,  and  AP.T,  for 
individual  bookbuyers  or  for  a  thorough  equipment  of  any  library. 

LISTS  A,  B,  and  C  are  of  books  selected  especially  for  School  Libraries. 
List  A. — For  Primary  and  Intermediate  Grades. 
List  B. — For  Grammar  and  High  School  Grades, 
List  C. — For  College  and  University  Libraries. 

The  other  lists  are  of  books  grouped  according  to  subjects,  and  include 
the  above. 

The  classifications  are  as  follows  : 

List  D. — HISTOBT.  List  O. — LANGUAGE,  LITERATURE,  AND 

"     E.— BiooRAPHr.  ART. 

'     P.— PHYSICAL  SCIENCE.  .  "     P.— REFERENCE  BOOKS. 

"     G. — MENTAL  AND  MORAL  SCIENCE.      "     O. — POETRY  AND  ESSAT. 
"    H.— POLITICAL  AND   SOCIAL   Sci-      "     R. — TRAVEL  AND  ADVENTURE. 

ENCE.  "      8.— PEDAGOGY  AND  EDUCATION. 

"      I. — FINANCE  AND  ECONOMICS.  "     T. — FICTION. 

"    K.— HYGIENE  AND  SANITARY  Sci-      "     U.— AMUSEMENT     AND     RECRBA- 

ENCE.  TION. 

'     L.— PHILOSOPHY  AND  METAPHYSICS.   "     V.— EVOLUTION. 
"    M. — TECHNOLOGY      AND      INDUS-      "    W. — RELIGION. 

TRIAL  ARTS.  "     X. — LAW. 

"    N.— ANTHROPOLOGY,  ETHNOLOGY,      "     Y.— MEDICINE. 

ARCHAEOLOGY,  PAL^JONTOL-      "     Z.— JUVENILE  BOOKS. 

OGY. 

AA.— UNCLASSIFIED.  BB.— SCHOOL  AND  COLLEGE  TEXT-BOOKS. 

CO.— SPANISH  PUBLICATIONS. 

We  respectfully  invite  the  attention  of  public  and  private  book-buyers 
everywhere  to  these  lists,  confident  that  they  will  be  found  of  interest 
and  profit.  Single  lists  mailed  free.  Complete  set,  18  cents  to  cover 
postage. 

D.  APPLETON  &  CO.,  PUBLISHERS, 

New  York,  Boston,  Chicago. 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

Santa  Barbara 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW. 


JUNO?  (992 


OOM  11/86  Series  9482 


MM    II   I 
3  1205  00446  9837 


AA      000291  198    o 


